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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic improvement wins the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or just the biggest shock.

Yet this year's race is fundamentally different. The pool of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers rising together. In an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a wild and fun season, he's up against five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot ought to shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin magic from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current isn't a normal year!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which was not a guarantee following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest 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 Coach of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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