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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly functions as a kind of apology. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the award. In practice, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

However the latest race is profoundly unique. The list of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and recent strugglers improving together. Under an typical year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in such a turbulent and fun season, he's facing five other elite candidates.

This is how the projected vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this isn't a typical season!

The area where his case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given after his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still