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Ordinarily, 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 squad in our preseason predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the biggest turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or merely the greatest shock.

But the latest competition is profoundly unique. The list of nominees is exceptionally strong. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime also-rans ascending together. Under an normal year, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and fun year, he's facing five other outstanding coaches.

Below is how the projected ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the system rather than improvising. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide-open receivers consistently. The QB has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been there, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the immense pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an organization.

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

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. 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 winning. But he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a rapid turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has mastered the off-field aspects, which was not a given after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. From the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an initial hot beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still