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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the biggest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or just the greatest surprise.

Yet the current competition is distinctly different. The pool of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions falling away and recent strugglers improving collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller 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 season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still