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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Sorry we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

However this year's competition is profoundly different. The group of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions declining and longtime strugglers improving in unison. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this turbulent and fun year, he's up against five other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot ought to shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a normal season!

The area where his case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given following his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still