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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or simply the most shocking upset.

However this year's race is profoundly unique. The group of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and recent underperformers rising in unison. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and fun year, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the ideal vote should look.

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

Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

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