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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the largest turnaround receives the prize. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest shock.

However this year's race is profoundly unique. The pool of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners declining and longtime underperformers rising together. Under an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a chaotic and fun year, he's up against several other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the projected vote could be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his rare ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

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

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he falls just short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still