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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It often serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround is handed the award. In practice, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the greatest upset.

However this year's field is profoundly unique. The group of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers rising in unison. In an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a wild and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal season, he would be the overwhelming choice. But the current isn't a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During 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 overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given after his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still