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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward formula. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the biggest turnaround receives the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest shock.

However this year's field is fundamentally different. The group of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions fading and recent underperformers ascending together. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing several other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the projected vote could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a innovative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Almost each bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

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

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an early hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still