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Typically, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple script. It often acts as a form of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement receives the award. However, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or just the most shocking upset.

Yet this year's field is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning division winners declining and longtime underperformers ascending in unison. In an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a wild and entertaining year, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Within an ideal ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, Williams has become more confident, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Almost every gamble – overhauling the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has succeeded. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway choice. But this isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways 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. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several victories behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is established for long-term winning. However he falls just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a comparable spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles aspects, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one place ahead of other QBs.

Still