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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It commonly functions as a form of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence receives the prize. In practice, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or just the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's competition is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and longtime strugglers improving collectively. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this turbulent and entertaining year, he's up against several other elite coaches.

This is how the projected vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

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