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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It often functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the award. However, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

Yet the current competition is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference champions declining and longtime also-rans ascending collectively. During an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing five other elite coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to conjure magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this isn't a typical season!

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress 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 defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence 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 Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still