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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround is handed the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or just the biggest upset.

Yet this year's race is profoundly unique. The list of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning conference winners declining and recent strugglers improving collectively. Under an normal season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's competing with five other elite candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to create big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. But this is not a normal year!

Where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He 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 wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still