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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence wins the award. In practice, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or just the biggest shock.

But the latest field is distinctly different. The list of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions declining and recent strugglers ascending together. During an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's competing with five other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a normal year!

The area where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for 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. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

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

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still