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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It often acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or merely the greatest upset.

However the current race is profoundly different. The list of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers ascending in unison. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against several other exceptional coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff mix of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still