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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the largest resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or just the biggest surprise.

However the current field is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division champions fading and recent also-rans rising together. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with multiple other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But the current is not a normal year!

Where his case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal staff mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still