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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround is handed the award. However, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or merely the greatest upset.

However the latest competition is distinctly unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions fading and recent strugglers ascending together. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's competing with five other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to create magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming choice. But this is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still