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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement receives the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or just the most shocking upset.

However this year's competition is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent division champions fading and longtime underperformers ascending together. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining year, he's facing several other outstanding candidates.

Here 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 signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that springs wide-open targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a normal season!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for 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 Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, 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 sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which was not a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still