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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple pattern. It often acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest improvement is handed the award. However, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the biggest surprise.

But this year's field is distinctly unique. The group of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been unpredictable, with reigning conference winners falling away and longtime strugglers ascending collectively. During an typical season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and fun season, he's up against several other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the system rather than going rogue. It is an attack built solely in the coach's vision: a bully-ball run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to conjure big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who entered the organization with the immense expectations he did. For two straight cycles, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

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

Where his candidacy runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained winning. But he comes up short in this ranking.

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

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on first-timers. Starting with the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run plays and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the schedule, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

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