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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly acts as a form of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround is handed the award. However, it fuels an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

Yet the current field is profoundly different. The list of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime underperformers improving together. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against several other elite coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical year, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee after his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still