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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a kind of apology. We regret we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the award. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or merely the most shocking shock.

But this year's field is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent strugglers ascending collectively. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's up against several other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this isn't a normal year!

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still