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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a form of apology. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the biggest turnaround is handed the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or just the greatest shock.

Yet the current race is profoundly different. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime underperformers ascending together. In an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a turbulent and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other elite candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the opportunity to display his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Almost each gamble – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. But 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 only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still