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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest improvement is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or simply the greatest surprise.

However the current race is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and longtime underperformers rising collectively. Under an typical season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a wild and entertaining season, he's facing five other elite coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot ought to be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a typical year!

The area where his case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still