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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It often serves as a form of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the biggest resurgence receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

But the latest competition is fundamentally unique. The list of candidates is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The NFL has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions falling away and recent underperformers ascending collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and fun season, he's competing with multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot could be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to display his special talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost each decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a normal year!

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. But he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the leadership aspects, which wasn't a guarantee after his early public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags wobbling again. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still