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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It often acts as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest improvement wins the award. In practice, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet the current field is distinctly unique. The list of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions declining and recent underperformers improving collectively. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with several other exceptional coaches.

This is how the ideal vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the clear-cut choice. But the current is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. 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 might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still