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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple pattern. It commonly acts as a form of apology. We regret we got wrong your squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround wins the award. However, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the greatest surprise.

But this year's competition is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent division champions declining and longtime strugglers rising in unison. Under an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a wild and entertaining year, he's competing with several other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty after his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still