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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence receives the award. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

But the latest field is distinctly unique. The list of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions fading and longtime also-rans rising in unison. In an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing five other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. From the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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