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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a form of apology. Sorry we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the coach who engineered the most dramatic resurgence receives the award. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually honoring superior coaching or merely the most shocking upset.

But this year's competition is distinctly different. The group of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions fading and longtime strugglers rising in unison. During an normal season, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing multiple other elite candidates.

Below is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right system, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's consistent excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less careless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's vision: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide-open targets consistently. The QB has capitalized. And when clear throws haven't been there, he's been capable to create magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the kind of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary year, he would be the overwhelming choice. But the current is not a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on defense. The Bears currently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Defensive minds can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term winning. But Johnson falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has masterminded a rapid resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his early press conference appearances and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently collapses in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller could have ended the season in October. Rather, it defined it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, putting him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still