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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It often functions as a type of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence wins the award. However, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking upset.

However the current race is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and recent also-rans rising collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in such a chaotic and fun season, he's competing with multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical ballot could be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a normal campaign!

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson comes up short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings 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

Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still