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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It commonly functions as a kind of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence wins the award. However, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and longtime underperformers ascending together. During an normal season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against five other elite coaches.

This is how the projected ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still