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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple script. It often serves as a kind of mea culpa. Sorry we misjudged your franchise in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the biggest turnaround wins the prize. In reality, it fuels an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or simply the most shocking shock.

But the current race is profoundly different. The pool of contenders is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division winners falling away and recent strugglers ascending collectively. Under an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and fun season, he's competing with multiple other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the projected ballot could look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to showcase his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of freelancing. It is an attack built solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the building with the immense pressure he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the clear-cut choice. But the current isn't a normal season!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for long-term success. But he falls just short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, Coen has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given after his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the ideal coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. But he has pulled everyone and everything together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the season in October. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of peers.

Still