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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the biggest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

However this year's race is fundamentally unique. The list of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions fading and longtime also-rans rising together. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and fun season, he's facing five other elite coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote should look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet this isn't a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football 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 EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a given after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching mix of youth and experience, he bet on newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of peers.

Still