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

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic resurgence receives the award. In reality, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or just the biggest shock.

Yet this year's field is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and recent underperformers rising in unison. During an ordinary year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a normal season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a typical season!

The area where his case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still