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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest resurgence receives the award. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or merely the most shocking upset.

But the current race is profoundly unique. The list of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent also-rans ascending in unison. During an normal year, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling year, he's up against several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the chance to display his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this isn't a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he falls just short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, he bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

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 deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

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