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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence receives the award. In reality, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the greatest upset.

But the latest field is distinctly different. The group of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions declining and longtime strugglers improving in unison. Under an normal season, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the projected vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that springs wide-open targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Almost every decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. However 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 only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But the current is not a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still