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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence wins the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet the latest field is profoundly unique. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions falling away and recent also-rans improving collectively. During an typical year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling year, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote could shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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