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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence wins the award. However, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

However the latest field is distinctly different. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions fading and recent also-rans improving together. In an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early strong start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still