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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often acts as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround is handed the prize. In practice, it fuels an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

However the latest field is distinctly unique. The group of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. In an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in this turbulent and thrilling season, he's competing with several other elite candidates.

This is how the projected ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained performance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to conjure big plays out of nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. That's rare for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a typical season, he would be the runaway choice. But this is not a normal season!

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 living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a given after his early public introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, he hired newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements together.

After an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the track. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

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

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still