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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the biggest turnaround is handed the prize. However, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

But the latest race is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions declining and recent strugglers improving together. Under an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this isn't a normal campaign!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his career. 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 notably, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which was not a guarantee after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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