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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence receives the prize. In practice, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the biggest shock.

But this year's competition is distinctly different. The pool of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers ascending in unison. During an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in such a wild and fun season, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a innovative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical year!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen hired newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still