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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or just the biggest shock.

However the latest competition is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers improving together. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this chaotic and fun year, he's up against several other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current isn't a normal campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still