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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the greatest upset.

However the current field is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners declining and recent strugglers ascending collectively. Under an normal year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a chaotic and fun year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to display his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to create magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost every gamble – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current isn't a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee following his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still