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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the biggest resurgence is handed the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the greatest shock.

However this year's race is distinctly different. The list of nominees is remarkably talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference champions declining and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. In an typical season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and fun season, he's competing with several other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected ballot ought to shake out.

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

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, the QB has been given the chance to display his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

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

The area where his case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. However he comes up short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

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