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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the biggest turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it creates an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the current field is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions fading and recent strugglers rising in unison. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his rare ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a normal campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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