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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a type of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who engineered the largest resurgence is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

But this year's race is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent division winners falling away and longtime underperformers improving collectively. During an ordinary season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a wild and thrilling season, he's up against five other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than freelancing. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the organization with the level of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal season, he would be the runaway choice. But this is not a normal season!

Where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. However he falls just short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the intangibles aspects, which was not a given after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early strong start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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