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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the biggest improvement wins the award. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the biggest shock.

But the current competition is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners fading and longtime underperformers improving together. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun season, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the runaway choice. But the current isn't a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

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

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still