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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It often acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic improvement is handed the award. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or merely the biggest shock.

But this year's field is fundamentally unique. The list of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime also-rans improving together. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's facing five other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot should be structured.

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

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

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the level of pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an franchise.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. But this is not a typical campaign!

Where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which was not a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still