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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the biggest upset.

But the current race is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners fading and recent strugglers ascending in unison. Under an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun season, he's up against five other elite candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to spin big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this isn't a normal year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. However Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the leadership aspects, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition 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 season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

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