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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the largest improvement wins the prize. However, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or simply the most shocking upset.

But the current race is fundamentally unique. The list of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions fading and recent underperformers ascending together. During an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's facing five other elite coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to conjure big plays from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical season!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of peers.

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