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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It often serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence receives the award. However, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet this year's field is profoundly unique. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions falling away and recent also-rans rising collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's up against several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his special ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial strong start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still