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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It often serves as a type of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the biggest improvement is handed the prize. In reality, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or merely the greatest shock.

But this year's field is distinctly different. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime also-rans improving in unison. In an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's competing with multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected vote could shake out.

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. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet the current is not a typical season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But he comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

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 year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which wasn't a given following his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still