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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward script. It frequently serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your team in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who oversaw the biggest turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or merely the biggest upset.

But the current competition is profoundly different. The list of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference winners fading and recent strugglers ascending together. In an normal year, a coach leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in such a wild and fun year, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. When you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to conjure magic from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

During a ordinary year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this is not a typical year!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen trusted newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with rookies. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still