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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the largest resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest shock.

However this year's competition is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and recent underperformers improving together. Under an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a wild and thrilling season, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to create magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical year, he would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a normal campaign!

Where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a given following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year case has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still