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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. However, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

However the current field is fundamentally unique. The list of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime underperformers rising collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a normal year!

Where his case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained success. But Johnson falls short here.

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

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still