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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement wins the award. However, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest shock.

However the latest competition is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with recent division winners fading and recent underperformers rising in unison. In an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's up against five other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical vote ought to shake out.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative passing attack that springs wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But this is not a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

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