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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the largest improvement wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's race is profoundly different. The list of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners declining and longtime strugglers rising collectively. Under an normal season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a typical year!

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained success. However Johnson falls just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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