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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your franchise in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the coach who oversaw the largest turnaround wins the prize. In reality, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or simply the most shocking surprise.

But the current field is fundamentally different. The pool of contenders is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been chaotic, with recent division winners falling away and longtime strugglers improving collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the conference would make him the overwhelming favorite. But in this wild and thrilling year, he's facing five other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the projected vote ought to look.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform 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, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his special talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets everywhere. The QB has capitalized. And when openings weren't available, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, transforming the QB into a timing-based passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Remarkably, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

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

The area where his case comes slightly unstuck is on defense. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are relying on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is legitimate. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be several wins behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable position to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best all-around ball of his professional life. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has mastered the leadership stuff, which was not a certainty after his initial public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an exceptionally raw staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is learning a their job in real-time. Yet he has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would go off the track. A midseason collapse had the team wobbling again. That's usually when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he simplified things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He receives the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can maximize that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a defining moment. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback decision.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the mid point of the year, the acquisition was an MVP front-runner. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single spot ahead of peers.

Still