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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It often acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the biggest improvement receives the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest shock.

But the current competition is distinctly unique. The pool of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners fading and recent strugglers ascending together. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the projected ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, he bet on first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

Still