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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the award. In practice, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

However this year's race is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division champions falling away and recent strugglers improving together. Under an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and fun year, he's facing five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the ideal vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to create magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the building with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. However he falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

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

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still