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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence receives the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

But this year's competition is fundamentally unique. The list of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners falling away and recent strugglers rising in unison. During an normal year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun year, he's competing with five other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot should shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an offense built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this isn't a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But he comes up short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

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

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

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