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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a type of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement is handed the prize. However, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the greatest shock.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners falling away and recent strugglers improving collectively. In an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun year, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming choice. But this isn't a typical year!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still