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Ordinarily, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a straightforward pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we got wrong your team in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the coach who engineered the largest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it sparks an annual argument about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior leadership or merely the biggest upset.

Yet the current race is profoundly unique. The pool of candidates is unusually talented. It has been the campaign of resurgences. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners declining and longtime also-rans ascending together. In an ordinary season, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. But in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing multiple other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the hypothetical ballot could look.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his special talent. Since Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged dominance. With Johnson, Williams has become more confident, less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings weren't available, he's been able to spin big plays out of nothing.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – overhauling the offensive line, highlighting the pass-catchers, transforming Williams into a timing-based thrower – has worked. That's uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a leader who entered the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a leader, there are no sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are relying on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's ranked lower because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins behind. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained winning. However he falls just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has masterminded a swift resurgence. During the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced coaching staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff mix of new ideas and experience, he hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a possibility that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year collapse caused the Jags wobbling once more. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. The coach recentered the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his legs more often.

The results are obvious. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the slightest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal moment. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller could have derailed the campaign in the early weeks. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the latter part of the season, placing him just one spot ahead of peers.

Still