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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest shock.

But the latest race is fundamentally different. The list of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and recent also-rans ascending together. During an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this turbulent and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin big plays from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But this isn't a normal campaign!

Where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still