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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the award. However, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or simply the greatest upset.

Yet this year's competition is distinctly unique. The list of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division winners fading and longtime also-rans improving in unison. During an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and fun year, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the ideal vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and experience, he hired newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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