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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic resurgence receives the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or simply the greatest shock.

However the current race is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with recent division champions fading and longtime also-rans improving together. During an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a wild and entertaining year, he's up against several other elite coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to create magic from broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this isn't a typical year!

The area where his case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still