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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a kind of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement receives the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or just the biggest surprise.

Yet the latest race is distinctly different. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners fading and longtime underperformers rising collectively. Under an typical year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this wild and entertaining year, he's competing with several other elite coaches.

Below is how the ideal ballot could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this is not a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still