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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence receives the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

However the current race is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners falling away and recent underperformers rising collectively. In an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the projected ballot should be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his otherworldly ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every decision – overhauling the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But this isn't a normal season!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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