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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the largest turnaround wins the award. In practice, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest upset.

But this year's competition is profoundly different. The list of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners declining and recent underperformers improving collectively. In an normal year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a wild and fun season, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this isn't a normal year!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

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