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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It frequently serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest improvement receives the prize. However, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

Yet this year's race is fundamentally unique. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference winners fading and longtime underperformers rising in unison. Under an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot could shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that creates wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. Yet this is not a typical season!

Where his case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. 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 victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However he falls just short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and experience, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still