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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often acts as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's competition is distinctly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and longtime also-rans rising collectively. In an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun season, he's facing several other elite candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to spin magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the building with the level of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a normal campaign!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still