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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor follows a simple pattern. It commonly acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the biggest turnaround receives the award. However, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or just the biggest surprise.

Yet the current competition is distinctly unique. The list of candidates is remarkably deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners fading and longtime strugglers improving in unison. In an normal year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and entertaining year, he's up against multiple other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the projected vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense designed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually every decision – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current isn't a normal season!

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for sustained winning. However he falls just short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, he bet on newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year case has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still