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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. However, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's competition is fundamentally different. The pool of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners fading and longtime underperformers improving collectively. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing five other elite candidates.

Below is how the ideal vote could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But the current isn't a normal year!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still