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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or just the greatest shock.

However this year's race is distinctly different. The list of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions falling away and longtime underperformers rising together. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this isn't a normal year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still