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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It commonly functions as a kind of apology. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the biggest turnaround is handed the award. In practice, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're actually honoring superior leadership or simply the biggest upset.

But this year's field is fundamentally unique. The list of nominees is unusually deep. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been messy, with recent division winners fading and longtime strugglers rising together. During an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in such a wild and fun year, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected vote should look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his special talent. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't there, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the runaway favorite. Yet this is not a typical season!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled everyone and all elements together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

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

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

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still