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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or merely the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's competition is profoundly different. The list of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions declining and recent also-rans rising together. Under an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a wild and thrilling season, he's up against five other elite coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot should be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term success. However he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

Still