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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest improvement is handed the award. However, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or just the greatest upset.

But the current field is distinctly different. The list of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime also-rans improving together. Under an normal year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining year, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still