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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often functions as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround is handed the prize. In practice, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the biggest upset.

However the current competition is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions declining and longtime strugglers rising collectively. Under an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a wild and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the projected vote ought to look.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his rare ability. From Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an franchise.

During a typical season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current isn't a normal year!

The area where his case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, 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 too much 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 turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field stuff, which wasn't a given following his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

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