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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 mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest resurgence receives the award. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or merely the biggest surprise.

Yet the current field is fundamentally unique. The list of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime underperformers ascending together. In an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining year, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the projected vote could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide-open targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But Johnson comes up just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and experience, Coen hired newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

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