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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It frequently serves as a type of apology. We regret we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest improvement is handed the award. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest upset.

However the current race is profoundly unique. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. Under an typical season, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

This is how the projected ballot could be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the chance to display his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the level of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

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

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up 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 dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run 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.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still