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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest shock.

Yet the current competition is profoundly unique. The list of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime also-rans rising together. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to create magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a rapid 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 spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still