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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward script. It frequently acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest upset.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally unique. The group of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference winners fading and recent also-rans rising collectively. Under an ordinary year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's up against several other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's consistent performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Almost every decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top name on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That type of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still