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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or just the greatest shock.

But the latest competition is fundamentally different. The pool of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners falling away and recent underperformers rising together. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this wild and fun season, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the ideal ballot ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

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

The area where Johnson's case comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. However he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, 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 AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off 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 place ahead of other QBs.

Still