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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest improvement wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or just the most shocking shock.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division winners declining and recent underperformers rising collectively. Under an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a wild and fun year, he's competing with multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the ideal vote ought to be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current isn't a normal year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson falls short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still