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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It often functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement wins the award. In practice, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the greatest surprise.

But this year's competition is distinctly different. The pool of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent also-rans improving in unison. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to create magic out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, 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 type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this is not a typical campaign!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still