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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple script. It often acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a direct trajectory: the coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it creates an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the current race is fundamentally different. The list of contenders is remarkably talented. It has been the year of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with recent conference champions fading and longtime strugglers improving in unison. Under an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming front-runner. But in this wild and entertaining year, he's up against multiple other exceptional coaches.

This is how the ideal vote ought to be structured.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach didn't merely fixed his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare ability. Since Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, the quarterback has become more confident, less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of freelancing. It is an attack constructed solely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a steady helping of play-action passes and a innovative aerial game that springs wide-open receivers consistently. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been capable to conjure big plays from nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a leader, there are zero sure things. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. But the current isn't a normal year!

Where Johnson's case comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is real. 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 two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is established for sustained winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has masterminded a dramatic resurgence. During the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has excelled at the intangibles stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. In contrast to other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and veteran savvy, he hired newbies. Starting with the leader himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of setup is intriguing on paper, but often collapses in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job in real-time. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the team wobbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped chasing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jags have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a skilled team, but he has proven he can get the most out of that roster.

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

Every Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different signal-caller and pairing him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in the early weeks. Instead, it defined it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to a lower rank in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still