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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who engineered the biggest improvement wins the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or just the biggest surprise.

But the current field is profoundly different. The group of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners falling away and recent strugglers ascending together. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling year, he's facing several other outstanding coaches.

This is how the projected ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. 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 hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an offense built solely in Johnson's vision: a physical ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

In a typical year, he would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current is not a typical campaign!

The area where Johnson's case runs a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

After an early strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Strong of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still