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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the largest resurgence is handed the prize. However, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior coaching or simply the greatest upset.

Yet the latest competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions falling away and recent also-rans rising in unison. Under an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's up against five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the projected ballot should shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to create magic from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the level of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current is not a typical year!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a given following his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced 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 on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable 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 obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still