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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

However this year's competition is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division champions falling away and recent strugglers rising together. During an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a wild and entertaining season, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the immense expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, he 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, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still