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Usually, the NFL's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently functions as a form of mea culpa. We regret we got wrong your squad in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct line: the skipper who orchestrated the most dramatic resurgence wins the prize. However, it sparks an annual debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're genuinely honoring excellent coaching or merely the biggest surprise.

However the current race is fundamentally different. The pool of nominees is unusually strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The league has been chaotic, with reigning conference winners declining and recent underperformers improving in unison. Under an normal season, Sean Payton guiding the his team to the summit of the AFC would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this turbulent and fun year, he's facing several other outstanding candidates.

This is how the projected vote should shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, Their Record

Coach of the Year voters love QBs. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Within an ideal environment, the QB has been given the chance to demonstrate his rare talent. Since Week 9, the Bears sit at number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's prolonged excellence. With Johnson, Williams has become increasingly decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the system instead of going rogue. It is an attack built entirely in the coach's image: a bully-ball ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that springs wide receiver receivers everywhere. The QB has thrived. And when clear throws weren't there, he's been capable to conjure big plays out of broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive philosophy. Almost every decision – overhauling the trenches, highlighting the tight ends, turning Williams into a timing-based passer – has worked. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who entered the building with the level of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not only to be a scheme genius but the type of leader that can inject new life into an franchise.

In a normal season, Johnson would be the clear-cut favorite. Yet this is not a normal season!

Where his case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but nobody can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defensive work. With a few breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional turnaround, and the core is in place for sustained winning. But he falls short here.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

Coen is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's another rookie leader who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. Over the stretch run of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the league in Expected Points Added per play.

Even more impressively, he has mastered the off-field stuff, which was not a guarantee following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach walked into Jacksonville with an exceptionally raw staff. In contrast to other coaches, who surrounded their staff with the ideal coaching cocktail of youth and experience, Coen bet on newbies. Starting with the head coach on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with rookies. That kind of approach is exciting in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. Yet he has pulled the entire group and everything together.

Following an early hot beginning, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason collapse had the Jags wobbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. Coen didn't. Instead, he streamlined things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive answers and started seeking reliable ones. The coach refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the tiniest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented roster, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Strong of the Year argument has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB decision.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and pairing him with an innovative play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Instead, it defined it. By the mid point of the season, the acquisition was an MVP contender. He has cooled off after that time, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the schedule, putting him only a single place ahead of peers.

Still