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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

But the latest race is distinctly unique. The pool of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division winners fading and recent strugglers rising collectively. Under an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to create big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a normal campaign!

Where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff mix of youth and experience, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still