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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It commonly acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic turnaround receives the award. However, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

However the current race is profoundly different. The list of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners declining and longtime underperformers rising in unison. Under an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this isn't a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given after his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

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