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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the biggest turnaround is handed the award. However, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest surprise.

Yet the latest field is profoundly different. The group of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners declining and longtime underperformers improving collectively. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in such a turbulent and fun season, he's facing five other elite candidates.

Below is how the projected vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his initial public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

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