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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It often acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or merely the biggest shock.

However the current race is profoundly different. The pool of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions declining and recent also-rans ascending together. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and fun season, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a normal year!

Where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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