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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It often serves as a form of apology. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. However, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the most shocking surprise.

But this year's competition is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers rising together. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in such a wild and thrilling season, he's facing several other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote ought to be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still