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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a straightforward script. It commonly acts as a type of apology. Sorry we underestimated your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who engineered the most dramatic improvement is handed the prize. However, it creates an yearly discussion about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or just the greatest surprise.

Yet this year's competition is profoundly unique. The pool of nominees is unusually talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference winners falling away and recent strugglers improving collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the stone-cold favorite. But in this wild and entertaining season, he's competing with five other elite candidates.

This is how the hypothetical vote could look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore signal-callers. They always have. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson didn't merely corrected Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his special talent. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a lucky run – it's prolonged performance. With Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a steady helping of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that springs wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to create big plays out of broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the trenches, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the top name on the coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive genius but the type of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is in place for sustained winning. However he falls short here.

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

Coen is in a comparable situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow rookie leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now sits at fifth in the NFL in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which wasn't a guarantee following his initial public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen trusted newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an early hot start, there was a risk that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year collapse caused the team stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen didn't. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. He receives the slightest deduction in the standings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a new quarterback and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him only one place ahead of peers.

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