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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It frequently serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the largest turnaround is handed the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

Yet this year's race is distinctly unique. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners falling away and recent underperformers improving together. During an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's up against several other outstanding coaches.

This is how the projected ballot could look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still