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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It often acts as a type of apology. We regret we underestimated your squad in our preseason forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a direct line: the coach who orchestrated the most dramatic improvement wins the prize. However, it creates an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're genuinely honoring superior leadership or merely the biggest upset.

But this year's field is fundamentally unique. The pool of contenders is remarkably strong. It has been the campaign of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with reigning conference winners fading and longtime strugglers rising in unison. In an typical season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a chaotic and fun year, he's competing with five other outstanding coaches.

This is how the projected ballot ought to shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors are fascinated by quarterbacks. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained performance. Under Johnson, Williams has become more confident, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan rather than freelancing. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide-open targets consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

Johnson came to Chicago with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually every gamble – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. That's rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the kind of expectations Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

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

The area where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Chicago defense presently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for sustained success. However he comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, 12-4

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has engineered a swift turnaround. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a given following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen hired newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and everything together.

After an initial strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would veer off the track. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified the approach. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Coach of the Year case has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. By the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still