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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple script. It commonly serves as a type of apology. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who oversaw the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. However, it sparks an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or simply the most shocking upset.

However this year's field is distinctly different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division winners declining and longtime strugglers rising together. During an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Below is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the building with the immense pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current isn't a normal campaign!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still