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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the award. However, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

But the latest race is fundamentally unique. The list of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions declining and recent also-rans improving collectively. In an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining year, he's competing with five other elite candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to conjure big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current is not a typical year!

Where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

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