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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence receives the prize. However, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the greatest upset.

However the latest competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference champions fading and recent strugglers rising together. In an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to create magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current is not a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still