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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence receives the prize. However, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

But the current field is distinctly different. The list of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference winners declining and longtime underperformers rising together. Under an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's facing several other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

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

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He 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. If not for a couple bounces 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. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still