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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple pattern. It often acts as a type of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or simply the most shocking upset.

But this year's race is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers improving in unison. During an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's competing with five other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a normal campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise 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 too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still