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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the biggest improvement receives the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

Yet the latest field is fundamentally different. The group of nominees is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions fading and recent underperformers improving together. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing five other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, 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 year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of youth and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

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