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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of apology. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the largest turnaround receives the prize. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

Yet the latest competition is distinctly unique. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime also-rans improving collectively. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote could look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

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

Where his case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still