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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award follows a simple script. It frequently serves as a kind of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest improvement wins the prize. In practice, it sparks an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior coaching or merely the most shocking shock.

But the latest race is profoundly unique. The group of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners falling away and recent also-rans improving in unison. During an typical season, a coach guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming front-runner. Yet in this turbulent and thrilling year, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

Below is how the projected vote ought to look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. In the right system, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays from nothing.

The coach came to Chicago with a specific offensive philosophy. Almost each bet – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning 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 entered the organization with the level of pressure he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a ordinary year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this is not a typical season!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he falls short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, he trusted first-timers. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That type of setup is exciting on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring everyone and all elements into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Instead, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the running game, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes 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 standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that time, slipping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still