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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. However, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or just the most shocking upset.

Yet the current race is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions declining and recent strugglers rising in unison. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot could look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current isn't a normal season!

Where his case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he comes up just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

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

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still