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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who engineered the biggest resurgence receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's field is distinctly unique. The list of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions declining and longtime underperformers rising collectively. Under an normal year, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing five other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the hypothetical vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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