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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the award. However, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or simply the biggest surprise.

But the latest race is distinctly different. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division champions fading and longtime underperformers improving together. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the projected ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to display his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

After an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still