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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the award. However, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

However this year's race is fundamentally different. The pool of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division winners fading and recent also-rans improving in unison. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in such a wild and entertaining season, he's competing with several other exceptional coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

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

Where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However he falls just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

Still