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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence is handed the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or simply the most shocking upset.

But the latest competition is profoundly unique. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent division champions fading and longtime strugglers rising in unison. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's competing with several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. However he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen hired first-timers. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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