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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. In reality, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

But this year's race is distinctly different. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime also-rans improving together. During an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still