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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct path: the coach who oversaw the largest improvement receives the award. In practice, it fuels an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or just the most shocking upset.

However the current competition is distinctly unique. The list of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent conference champions declining and recent also-rans rising collectively. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his special ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a brief surge – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system rather than freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings haven't been there, he's been capable to conjure magic from broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. But this isn't a normal season!

The area where his case runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall football of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defense that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a given following his early public appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff blend of youth and experience, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a new job in real-time. But he has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A midseason collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting reliable ones. The coach recentered the attack around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Rather, it made it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of peers.

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