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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence is handed the award. However, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or simply the greatest shock.

Yet the current field is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners declining and recent strugglers rising collectively. In an typical year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and fun season, he's up against several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical vote should shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to conjure big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate 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 surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a normal season!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still