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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It frequently serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign projections.

In theory, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the biggest turnaround wins the prize. In practice, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding superior coaching or merely the biggest shock.

Yet the current field is distinctly unique. The pool of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners falling away and longtime also-rans improving together. Under an typical season, a coach guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a chaotic and thrilling season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the projected vote should look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a quarterback, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson not only fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, Williams has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense built entirely in the coach's image: a physical run game, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a creative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to create magic out of broken plays.

Johnson arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who entered the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a ordinary season, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. But the current isn't a normal campaign!

The area where his candidacy comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously inconsistent. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for long-term success. However Johnson falls short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the finest 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 Expected Points Added per play.

What's more notably, he has nailed the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently collapses in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early strong start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse had the Jags wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. The offense stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a hinge moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller could have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an MVP candidate. He has fallen away after that time, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him just a single place ahead of peers.

Still