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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround receives the award. However, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior coaching or just the greatest upset.

However this year's field is fundamentally unique. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and recent also-rans rising together. In an typical season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this turbulent and fun year, he's facing multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right system, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a normal season!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still