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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple formula. It frequently serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement is handed the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the greatest shock.

Yet this year's field is distinctly unique. The list of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division champions fading and longtime underperformers improving in unison. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling year, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the ideal ballot could look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a normal season!

Where his case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still