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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple pattern. It often serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the largest turnaround is handed the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's race is fundamentally different. The group of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with recent division winners fading and recent strugglers rising collectively. During an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and fun season, he's up against several other elite coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current isn't a typical season!

Where his case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, 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 sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still