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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the biggest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking surprise.

However the latest field is profoundly different. The list of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions fading and recent strugglers rising collectively. In an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot should be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his special ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still