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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It often serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or just the greatest shock.

However the current field is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and recent strugglers improving in unison. During an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and fun year, he's competing with several other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

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

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this isn't a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. However Johnson falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

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