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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet this year's race is profoundly different. The list of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions falling away and longtime also-rans ascending together. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent performance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

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

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still