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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It commonly functions as a kind of apology. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest resurgence receives the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

But the latest race is fundamentally different. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division champions declining and recent also-rans rising together. Under an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the projected vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper system, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense hype he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical year, he would be the runaway favorite. Yet this isn't a normal year!

The area where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. From the leader himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still