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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It often serves as a type of apology. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the most dramatic turnaround wins the prize. In reality, it creates an annual debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding superior leadership or simply the biggest surprise.

However the latest competition is distinctly unique. The group of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning conference champions declining and recent underperformers ascending together. In an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in such a wild and entertaining season, he's facing multiple other elite coaches.

This is how the projected vote should be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of freelancing. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that creates wide receiver targets everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive philosophy. Almost every gamble – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who entered the organization with the level of pressure Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this isn't a typical year!

The area where Johnson's case runs slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall football of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee following his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the ideal staff blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would veer off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped chasing home-run answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen recentered the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year argument has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, placing him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still