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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It commonly acts as a type of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest turnaround receives the award. In practice, it sparks an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior coaching or just the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The group of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been messy, with recent division winners fading and recent strugglers ascending together. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with several other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been given the chance to display his special ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this isn't a normal year!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. However he falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still