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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple pattern. It commonly acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence receives the award. However, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's race is distinctly different. The list of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners declining and longtime also-rans improving together. In an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly talent. 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. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance 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 behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However he comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and experience, he hired newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still