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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic improvement wins the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or simply the greatest upset.

But this year's competition is distinctly unique. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions declining and recent underperformers rising in unison. During an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a wild and thrilling season, he's competing with several other elite coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his special ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

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

The area where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a given following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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