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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a kind of apology. We regret we misjudged your franchise in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround wins the award. In practice, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or simply the biggest surprise.

However the latest race is distinctly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division winners fading and recent also-rans improving in unison. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and fun year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to spin magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the immense pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a normal campaign!

The area where his case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given following his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over 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

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still