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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently acts as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement wins the prize. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the greatest upset.

However the current competition is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners fading and longtime underperformers improving in unison. In an typical season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and fun year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a typical season!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. However Johnson falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

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