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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a form of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut line: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or merely the biggest surprise.

But the current race is fundamentally unique. The pool of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime also-rans rising collectively. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot should look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two 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, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. But the current is not a typical campaign!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest 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 case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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