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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It often serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the largest resurgence receives the award. However, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or just the greatest surprise.

Yet the current field is distinctly different. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the year of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners falling away and recent underperformers improving collectively. In an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and fun year, he's up against multiple other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this is not a typical season!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff mix of youth and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of peers.

Still