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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It often serves as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or simply the most shocking upset.

However the current race is fundamentally different. The list of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference winners declining and longtime underperformers rising collectively. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot should be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a normal year!

Where his candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But he comes up short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Each Coach of the Year case has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still