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Usually, the NFL's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the largest improvement wins the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the latest race is profoundly different. The group of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the year of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division champions falling away and recent also-rans improving together. Under an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against five other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot should be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been available, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a typical season!

Where his case runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team wobbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still