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Typically, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple pattern. It often functions as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround is handed the prize. In practice, it sparks an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or simply the most shocking shock.

However the current field is fundamentally different. The group of candidates is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division champions declining and recent underperformers rising collectively. During an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this turbulent and fun season, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected vote ought to shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a innovative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin magic out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the building with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the type of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a normal season!

The area where Johnson's case comes slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given after his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff blend of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. But he has pulled the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still