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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the award. In reality, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the latest field is profoundly different. The pool of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the year of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions falling away and recent strugglers improving collectively. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this turbulent and fun season, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the chance to display his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost each decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the building with the level of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But the current isn't a typical season!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defensive work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given after his early public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. 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 setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still