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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the largest resurgence receives the award. In practice, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent underperformers rising in unison. Under an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and fun season, he's up against five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot ought to look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Almost each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the runaway favorite. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense 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 consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

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