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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It commonly functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who orchestrated the largest resurgence wins the award. In practice, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or simply the most shocking surprise.

But the latest competition is distinctly unique. The group of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division winners fading and longtime strugglers ascending together. In an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this chaotic and fun year, he's up against multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But this isn't a typical year!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he comes up just short here.

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

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. During 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 spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still