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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the award. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or just the greatest surprise.

But the current field is profoundly different. The group of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference champions fading and longtime strugglers rising collectively. In an typical season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and entertaining season, he's competing with several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a normal year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still