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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement is handed the award. However, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division champions falling away and recent underperformers improving in unison. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this is not a normal year!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. However he falls short here.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which was not a certainty following his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still