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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It often acts as a type of apology. Our apologies we got wrong your franchise in our pre-campaign predictions.

In theory, it's a clear-cut line: the coach who engineered the largest improvement is handed the award. In practice, it sparks an annual debate about expectations and whether we're actually rewarding excellent leadership or merely the greatest surprise.

Yet this year's competition is profoundly different. The list of candidates is exceptionally talented. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division winners fading and recent underperformers improving together. During an typical year, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. Yet in such a wild and thrilling year, he's up against multiple other exceptional coaches.

Here is how the projected vote could look.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, Their Record

Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, Williams has been afforded the opportunity to display his special talent. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive EPA per play. That's not a lucky run – it's consistent performance. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become increasingly confident, far less careless, and has willingly submitted to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a consistent helping of play-action and a creative passing attack that frees wide-open receivers consistently. Williams has thrived. And when easy reads haven't been available, he's been capable to conjure magic from nothing.

Johnson came to the Bears with a clear offensive blueprint. Almost each gamble – overhauling the offensive line, utilizing the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm thrower – has worked. This is rare for a rookie head coach. And it's rarer yet for a coach who entered the building with the immense expectations Johnson did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, he has met expectations – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of leader that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal season, he would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet this isn't a typical year!

Where his candidacy comes a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently rank in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously fickle. Coaches can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's ranked lower because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple breaks of the ball, the team would be several victories worse off. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short here.

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

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the finest all-around football of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty following his early public introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the perfect coaching blend of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen hired newbies. From the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often collapses in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything into sync.

Following an initial strong start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won multiple games in a row and will be the conference's number three seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the standings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that roster.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

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

Moving on from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it made it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the second half of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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