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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who orchestrated the largest resurgence is handed the award. In practice, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or merely the most shocking surprise.

Yet this year's race is profoundly unique. The group of contenders is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions fading and longtime underperformers ascending collectively. In an ordinary season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this chaotic and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

This is how the projected vote should shake out.

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

Coach of the Year voters adore signal-callers. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of freelancing. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

During a typical season, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained success. However Johnson falls short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

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

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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