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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It frequently serves as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic improvement is handed the prize. However, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest shock.

Yet the current race is distinctly unique. The pool of nominees is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions declining and recent strugglers ascending collectively. Under an typical year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's facing five other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a normal year!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only one place ahead of peers.

Still