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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. However, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the biggest upset.

Yet this year's field is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners fading and longtime underperformers rising collectively. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the ideal vote could look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But this is not a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a given after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still