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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It often functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. However, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the greatest surprise.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers ascending together. In an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current is not a typical season!

The area where his case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However he comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

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