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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor adheres to a straightforward pattern. It commonly serves as a type of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your franchise in our pre-campaign forecasts.

On paper, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic turnaround is handed the award. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly honoring excellent leadership or merely the greatest upset.

Yet the current competition is fundamentally different. The list of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the season of turnarounds. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and longtime also-rans improving in unison. Under an ordinary year, Sean Payton guiding the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the stone-cold front-runner. But in this chaotic and entertaining season, he's facing several other exceptional coaches.

This is how the hypothetical ballot could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, Their Record

Voters for Coach of the Year voters love QBs. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. When you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected his young quarterback; he's freed him. Given a proper ecosystem, Williams has been given the opportunity to showcase his rare talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent performance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver targets all over the field. The QB has thrived. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to conjure big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to Chicago with a clear offensive philosophy. Virtually every gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming Williams into a timing-based passer – has paid off. That's uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the organization with the kind of expectations he did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no sure things. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet the current is not a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's candidacy comes slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously inconsistent. Defensive minds can emphasise creating turnovers, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive work. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However he comes up short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable position to Johnson. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also overseen the overhaul of a defense that now sits at number five in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which wasn't a certainty following his initial press conference introduction and some of his preseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and experience, he trusted newbies. From the leader himself to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of approach is exciting on paper, but often collapses in practice – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is learning a new job on the fly. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an early strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the Jags stumbling once more. That's typically when leaders overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen recentered the offense around his playmakers and the running game, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. He gets the slightest knock in the standings because he inherited a talented team, but he has proven he can maximize that roster.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

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

Parting ways from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has regressed after that time, slipping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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