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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence is handed the prize. However, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior coaching or just the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally unique. The list of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners declining and longtime strugglers ascending in unison. Under an normal year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a turbulent and thrilling season, he's up against several other elite coaches.

This is how the projected vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this isn't a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he 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 Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still