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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly functions as a form of apology. Sorry we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround is handed the prize. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or just the biggest surprise.

However the current competition is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions declining and recent also-rans ascending in unison. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and entertaining year, he's up against several other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote could shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a normal season!

The area where his case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has regressed after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

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