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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

Yet this year's race is fundamentally unique. The pool of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning conference winners fading and recent also-rans ascending together. In an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's up against five other elite coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given after his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still