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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It often acts as a type of apology. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the biggest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the latest field is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions falling away and recent also-rans improving in unison. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and fun season, he's up against multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current is not a normal year!

The area 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 surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still