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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It often functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our preseason predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. In reality, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the biggest shock.

But this year's field is fundamentally unique. The pool of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers rising together. Under an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the hypothetical vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that springs wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to create big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current isn't a typical season!

The area where his case comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has excelled at the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

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