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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

However the current competition is fundamentally unique. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners fading and recent also-rans rising in unison. In an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this wild and fun year, he's up against several other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost each decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up just short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

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

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still