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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It commonly functions as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. However, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or simply the greatest shock.

Yet the current competition is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners declining and longtime also-rans improving together. Under an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's up against five other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote should look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the chance to display his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open targets consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

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

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. However Johnson comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball 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.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year case has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still