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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently functions as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or merely the biggest shock.

However the current field is profoundly different. The group of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime underperformers ascending together. In an normal year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this turbulent and fun season, he's competing with five other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the ideal ballot should look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, 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 culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a normal season!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However he comes up short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still