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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It often functions as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who orchestrated the biggest improvement is handed the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent leadership or just the greatest shock.

But this year's race is distinctly unique. The list of nominees is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent division winners falling away and recent also-rans rising together. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this wild and fun season, he's competing with several other elite candidates.

This is how the projected vote should shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative aerial game that creates wide-open receivers all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to spin big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the building with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive dork but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But this is not a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much 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 established for long-term success. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That type of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run plays and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year argument has a defining moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new signal-caller and pairing him with an new play-caller might have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP contender. He has cooled off since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still