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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or simply the greatest surprise.

However this year's race is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent conference winners declining and longtime also-rans improving together. Under an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and thrilling year, he's facing several other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

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

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a given after his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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