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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the largest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

But the latest competition is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners falling away and recent underperformers improving together. Under an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But the current is not a normal year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

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

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still