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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It commonly acts as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the biggest improvement is handed the award. However, it sparks an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet the current race is distinctly unique. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners fading and recent strugglers ascending together. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a chaotic and fun season, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the ideal ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost each gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

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

The area where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty following his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an early strong start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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