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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a kind of apology. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround receives the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or merely the most shocking shock.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The list of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division champions declining and recent underperformers ascending collectively. During an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's up against several other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal vote could be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to create magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

The area where his case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff blend of youth and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

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