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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

However the current competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions falling away and longtime strugglers rising together. During an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this isn't a typical year!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still