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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a simple formula. It commonly serves as a form of apology. We regret we underestimated your squad in our preseason predictions.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence is handed the award. However, it creates an annual argument about expectations and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or just the greatest upset.

However the current race is distinctly different. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent division champions declining and recent underperformers ascending in unison. During an normal year, Sean Payton leading the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in such a turbulent and fun season, he's up against five other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the projected vote could be structured.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide-open targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to create magic from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

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

Where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term success. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of youth and experience, he bet on first-timers. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has cooled off since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still