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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a direct path: the skipper who engineered the most dramatic improvement wins the award. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent coaching or merely the greatest surprise.

But the current competition is fundamentally unique. The pool of candidates is exceptionally deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. During an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in such a turbulent and fun year, he's up against five other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the projected ballot could look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to conjure magic out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a coach who entered the building with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his case runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie leader who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

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