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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Coach of the Year trophy follows a simple formula. It often functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our preseason projections.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who engineered the largest improvement is handed the award. In practice, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or simply the greatest surprise.

However the latest competition is fundamentally different. The list of contenders is exceptionally talented. It has been the season of turnarounds. The league has been unpredictable, with recent conference champions declining and longtime also-rans improving in unison. During an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the top of the AFC would make him the clear front-runner. But in such a turbulent and entertaining year, he's facing five other outstanding candidates.

Below is how the projected ballot could shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you solve a quarterback, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. In the right ecosystem, Williams has been afforded the chance to demonstrate his rare ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the gameplan rather than going rogue. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads weren't available, he's been able to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive vision. Almost each bet – rebuilding the trenches, highlighting the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a rhythm passer – has succeeded. That's rare for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who entered the organization with the level of expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the most sought-after name on the coaching market. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has met expectations – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. But this isn't a typical campaign!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are famously fickle. Coaches can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offense is real. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defense's work. With a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two wins worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. But Johnson falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar situation to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the stretch run of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

What's more impressively, he has nailed the off-field stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference appearances and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to position coaches, the Jaguars are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is intriguing in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. Yet Coen has pulled everyone and all elements into sync.

After an early strong beginning, there was a risk that the season would go off the rails. A midseason setback had the Jags stumbling again. That's usually when coaches panic and change too much. He didn't. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are clear. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he took over a skilled roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has cooled off since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

Still