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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the largest resurgence wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the greatest upset.

However the current competition is profoundly different. The pool of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference champions fading and recent also-rans rising together. In an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a typical year!

Where his case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given after his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted first-timers. From the leader himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring the entire group and everything together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed since that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still