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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the largest improvement is handed the prize. In reality, it creates an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or merely the most shocking shock.

Yet the current competition is profoundly unique. The list of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime underperformers ascending together. In an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun year, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to create big plays from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this is not a typical season!

The area where his case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But he falls short here.

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

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given after his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still