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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It commonly functions as a kind of apology. We regret we misjudged your team in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the most shocking shock.

However the current field is distinctly different. The list of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions falling away and longtime also-rans ascending in unison. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the projected vote ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this isn't a normal year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still