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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward formula. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest improvement receives the prize. However, it creates an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest surprise.

Yet this year's race is profoundly different. The pool of candidates is unusually deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with reigning division winners fading and longtime also-rans rising in unison. In an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

Below is how the projected vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that frees wide receiver targets consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

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

The area where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for sustained success. But Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

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

Coen took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching blend of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

Still