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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic improvement wins the award. However, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking shock.

However the latest competition is profoundly unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners fading and longtime underperformers improving collectively. Under an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and fun season, he's up against five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal vote should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, he would be the runaway favorite. But this isn't a normal year!

Where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But he comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still