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Typically, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple pattern. It frequently acts as a kind of mea culpa. We regret we misjudged your squad in our preseason projections.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut path: the skipper who engineered the largest resurgence receives the prize. In reality, it creates an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're actually rewarding excellent coaching or merely the greatest upset.

Yet the latest field is fundamentally unique. The pool of nominees is remarkably deep. It has been the season of comebacks. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and longtime strugglers improving in unison. Under an typical year, a coach leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's up against several other outstanding candidates.

Here is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year voters are fascinated by quarterbacks. They always have. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you transform a franchise QB, you're well on your way to winning the award.

Ben Johnson hasn't just fixed Caleb Williams; he's freed him. In the right environment, the QB has been afforded the opportunity to display his otherworldly talent. From Week 9, the Chicago offense sit at number four in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's sustained dominance. With his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less careless, and has eagerly submitted to the system instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed solely in the coach's vision: a physical run game, a heavy dose of play-action and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has capitalized. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to create big plays from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a specific offensive philosophy. Virtually each gamble – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has succeeded. This is uncommon for a first-year skipper. And it's even more uncommon still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of hype he did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme genius but the kind of leader that can inject fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the runaway choice. Yet this isn't a typical year!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on defense. The Bears presently sit in the bottom third in defensive efficiency. They are living on turnovers, and takeaways are famously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be several wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is in place for long-term success. But Johnson falls just short here.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, His Team, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a comparable spot to Johnson. He's a fellow first-time leader who has masterminded a swift turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the overhaul of a defensive unit that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, Coen has nailed the leadership stuff, which wasn't a guarantee after his early press conference introduction and some of his preseason decisions.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly raw coaching staff. In contrast to Johnson, who packed their staff with the perfect coaching mix of youth and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the leader on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That kind of approach is intriguing on paper, but frequently fails in practice – with other teams are a warning – because everybody is figuring out a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and all elements together.

After an initial hot start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A midseason setback had the team stumbling again. That's typically when leaders panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive answers and started hunting reliable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the running game, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more often.

The results are clear. The Jags have won seven games in a row and will be the AFC's number three playoff seed. Coen gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can maximize that roster.

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

Each Strong of the Year argument has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Parting ways from a veteran, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new play-caller might have ended the campaign in October. Rather, it made it. Through the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to 23rd in EPA per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him only one spot ahead of other QBs.

Still