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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround wins the award. In practice, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or merely the most shocking shock.

Yet the current field is profoundly different. The list of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with recent division winners falling away and longtime strugglers improving collectively. During an typical year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the ideal ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current is not a normal campaign!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained success. But Johnson falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still