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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It often serves as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the largest resurgence receives the award. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's competition is profoundly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers improving collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But this isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. 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 rookie head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

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