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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who orchestrated the biggest improvement is handed the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent leadership or just the greatest shock.

Yet the current race is distinctly different. The list of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners declining and longtime strugglers rising together. In an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with five other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. Under Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive vision. Virtually every bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. Yet this is not a typical year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained success. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his offseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of youth and experience, he trusted first-timers. From the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an early hot start, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still