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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It commonly acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the biggest turnaround wins the prize. In reality, it creates an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or just the greatest upset.

Yet the current race is profoundly unique. The group of candidates is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions falling away and longtime strugglers rising together. During an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

This is how the projected ballot should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than freelancing. It is an offense designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a typical season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a normal year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable situation to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff mix of youth and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still