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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It frequently functions as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

However the latest race is distinctly different. The group of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners fading and longtime also-rans improving in unison. Under an typical year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a wild and thrilling season, he's up against several other elite candidates.

This is how the ideal ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic from nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming 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 building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

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

Where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

Still