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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It commonly acts as a form of apology. We regret we misjudged your franchise in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a direct path: the skipper who oversaw the largest turnaround is handed the award. In practice, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or just the greatest shock.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions falling away and longtime underperformers improving together. During an typical season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a wild and thrilling season, he's up against five other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a normal season!

Where his candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still