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Usually, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple script. It often serves as a type of apology. We regret we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround receives the prize. In practice, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or just the biggest upset.

But the current field is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference champions falling away and longtime strugglers rising together. Under an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and entertaining season, he's up against multiple other outstanding coaches.

Here is how the projected ballot should shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a quarterback, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his special ability. From midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged performance. With his guidance, Williams has become more decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense built entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. The QB has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been able to create magic from nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually every decision – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the immense hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Remarkably, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a ordinary season, he would be the runaway favorite. But the current isn't a typical season!

Where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Coaches can focus on creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. But he comes up short here.

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

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he bet on first-timers. From the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early hot beginning, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his legs more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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