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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic improvement receives the award. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest upset.

Yet this year's competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners falling away and recent also-rans improving in unison. In an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and fun year, he's facing several other elite coaches.

Below is how the ideal vote should be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a certainty following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff mix of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

Still