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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest improvement is handed the prize. However, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or just the biggest surprise.

Yet the current competition is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division winners falling away and recent also-rans improving together. Under an normal year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this turbulent and entertaining season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. But he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a given following his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still