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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It often serves as a kind of apology. We regret we got wrong your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the most dramatic improvement receives the prize. In reality, it fuels an yearly argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or merely the biggest upset.

But the current field is fundamentally different. The pool of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning division champions falling away and longtime also-rans rising collectively. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining season, he's up against multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the projected vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open receivers all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to spin big plays out of nothing.

Johnson came to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Virtually each bet – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the tight ends, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the head coaching market. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a offensive wizard but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an franchise.

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

Where Johnson's candidacy runs a bit into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and experience, he bet on first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year argument has a hinge moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still