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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who orchestrated the biggest improvement is handed the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the most shocking surprise.

But the current competition is distinctly unique. The group of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners declining and longtime strugglers rising collectively. During an normal season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the clear favorite. But in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

This is how the projected ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But this is not a normal campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching blend of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still