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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a type of apology. Sorry we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the biggest turnaround wins the award. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or just the greatest surprise.

Yet the latest competition is fundamentally unique. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and recent also-rans ascending in unison. During an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical vote could be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a normal season!

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle 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 dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still