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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It often acts as a type of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the biggest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or just the biggest upset.

But the latest race is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. In an normal season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with five other exceptional coaches.

This is how the projected vote ought to look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each bet – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained success. But he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the leadership aspects, which wasn't a given after his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

Still