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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence wins the prize. However, it sparks an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

But the latest field is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime underperformers ascending in unison. In an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a turbulent and fun year, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a typical year!

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. 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 two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still