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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It often serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement is handed the prize. However, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's field is distinctly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division winners declining and recent strugglers ascending together. During an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and fun year, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should look.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

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

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still