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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward script. It often serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your franchise in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who oversaw the biggest turnaround receives the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about expectations and whether we're truly honoring superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's race is distinctly unique. The list of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been chaotic, with recent conference winners declining and recent underperformers rising collectively. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this chaotic and fun year, he's facing multiple other exceptional candidates.

This is how the projected vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. From Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent performance. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been available, he's been capable to create big plays from broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he 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 breathe new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the runaway choice. Yet the current isn't a normal year!

The area where his case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given following his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and everything into sync.

After an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year case has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

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