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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround wins the award. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet the latest field is fundamentally unique. The list of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime also-rans ascending in unison. In an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in such a chaotic and fun season, he's up against several other exceptional coaches.

This is how the projected ballot ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's prolonged performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

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

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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