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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the prize. In practice, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

However the latest race is distinctly unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and fun season, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to shake out.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

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

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a given after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

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