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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It commonly functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement receives the award. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the greatest upset.

But this year's race is fundamentally unique. The group of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division winners falling away and longtime strugglers improving together. Under an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and fun season, he's facing several other elite coaches.

This is how the projected ballot ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the level of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he hired newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. 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 spot ahead of other QBs.

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