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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple pattern. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or just the greatest surprise.

However the current competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions declining and longtime underperformers improving collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's up against multiple other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the level of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a normal year!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth 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 press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still