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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple pattern. It often functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the biggest improvement receives the award. In reality, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the biggest upset.

However the current competition is distinctly different. The group of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division winners declining and recent also-rans improving together. Under an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's up against multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his special ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the organization with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But this is not a typical campaign!

The area where his case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year case has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still