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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple pattern. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence receives the award. However, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or just the greatest shock.

But the current race is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and longtime strugglers improving in unison. During an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's facing several other elite candidates.

This is how the ideal ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the immense pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a normal season!

Where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still