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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It often functions as a kind of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement is handed the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or simply the biggest surprise.

But the current race is profoundly unique. The pool of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent division champions falling away and longtime strugglers ascending together. During an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected vote should be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical season!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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