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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround receives the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference champions falling away and recent strugglers rising in unison. In an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's competing with five other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote could look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

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

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. But he comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still