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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the award. In reality, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking shock.

But this year's field is distinctly unique. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and recent also-rans rising together. In an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this turbulent and fun season, he's up against multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current is not a normal season!

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson 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 several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

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