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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of apology. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

But this year's competition is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers improving in unison. In an typical year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a wild and fun year, he's competing with several other elite coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot should be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. However he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still