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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It often functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

But the current field is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners fading and longtime underperformers rising together. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

This is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the organization with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this is not a normal season!

Where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still