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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the biggest turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the biggest surprise.

Yet the current race is profoundly different. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime also-rans improving in unison. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and entertaining season, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected vote ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical campaign!

The area where his case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff blend of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

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