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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or simply the biggest shock.

However this year's field is fundamentally unique. The group of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners declining and recent also-rans improving together. In an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and fun year, he's competing with multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot should be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping 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 there, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this isn't a normal season!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still