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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It frequently acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

But this year's field is fundamentally unique. The group of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and longtime underperformers rising in unison. In an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's up against five other elite coaches.

This is how the hypothetical vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his rare ability. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the leadership aspects, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

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