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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It frequently serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest turnaround receives the prize. In practice, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest shock.

However the latest field is fundamentally different. The pool of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime underperformers improving collectively. In an typical season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's up against several other elite candidates.

Below is how the ideal vote should shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this isn't a normal season!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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