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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. In reality, it creates an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest upset.

But the current competition is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners declining and recent underperformers improving together. During an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and fun season, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the hypothetical vote should shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his special ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current isn't a typical year!

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. However he falls short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given after his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still