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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently functions as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement wins the award. In practice, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the greatest shock.

Yet this year's field is profoundly different. The group of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers rising collectively. Under an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this chaotic and thrilling season, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected ballot could look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the immense hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet this isn't a typical season!

Where his case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and experience, he trusted first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

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