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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward formula. It often acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround is handed the prize. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or just the biggest upset.

Yet the current field is fundamentally different. The list of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions falling away and recent underperformers ascending together. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing five other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However he comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still