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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest turnaround is handed the award. However, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or merely the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's competition is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division winners declining and recent strugglers ascending in unison. During an normal year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a typical year!

Where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot 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 few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However he comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which was not a given after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of youth and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still