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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the biggest turnaround is handed the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or just the most shocking upset.

Yet the current competition is distinctly different. The group of contenders is remarkably deep. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent division champions fading and longtime also-rans rising together. During an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's up against multiple other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been given the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense hype he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But the current is not a normal season!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a swift resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the off-field aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching mix of youth and experience, he trusted newbies. From the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the rails. A midseason setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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