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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or just the most shocking surprise.

However this year's competition is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions fading and recent strugglers improving together. During an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and fun season, he's up against several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote should look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that springs wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the runaway favorite. But this isn't a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged 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 deduction in the rankings 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 argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still