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Typically, the NFL's Coach of the Year award follows a straightforward formula. It commonly serves as a form of mea culpa. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our preseason forecasts.

On paper, it's a direct line: the coach who oversaw the biggest turnaround receives the award. In reality, it fuels an yearly debate about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding excellent leadership or merely the most shocking surprise.

But this year's field is fundamentally different. The list of contenders is unusually deep. It has been the campaign of turnarounds. The league has been messy, with reigning division champions declining and recent strugglers ascending together. During an normal season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the conference would make him the clear front-runner. But in this wild and fun year, he's facing several other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) Ben Johnson, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. When you solve a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected his young quarterback; he's unleashed him. In the right environment, Williams has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his special ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's sustained excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme rather than going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's image: a bully-ball run game, a steady dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that frees wide-open targets everywhere. Williams has thrived. And when clear throws weren't available, he's been capable to spin magic from broken plays.

The coach came to the Bears with a defined offensive vision. Almost every decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has worked. This is rare for a rookie skipper. And it's even more uncommon yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense hype Johnson did. For two straight offseasons, he was the hottest candidate on the head coaching carousel. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, he has met the hype – and even surpassed them. He's demonstrated not just to be a scheme wizard but the type of culture builder that can inject new life into an franchise.

During a normal season, he would be the clear-cut favorite. But the current is not a normal year!

Where his case runs slightly unstuck is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense presently rank 25th in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress creating turnovers, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the ballot because the offensive production is sustainable. He's not higher because luck is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. If not for a few bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the foundation is established for long-term winning. However Johnson comes up just short here.

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

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar position to Johnson. He's a fellow rookie head coach who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks fifth in the league in EPA per play.

Even more impressively, Coen has nailed the off-field aspects, which was not a certainty after his early public introduction and some of his preseason moves.

Coen walked into the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike Johnson, who surrounded their staff with the ideal staff cocktail of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen trusted newbies. From the leader on down to assistants to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but frequently fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is figuring out a new job on the fly. But Coen has pulled everyone and everything together.

After an initial strong start, there was a chance that the campaign would go off the track. A mid-year collapse had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he streamlined the approach. The offense stopped pursuing explosive plays and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach recentered the offense around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged Lawrence to use his legs more.

The results are evident. The Jaguars have won seven games in a row and will be the conference's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a talented roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Each Strong of the Year narrative has a hinge decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a incumbent, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new offensive coordinator could have derailed the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the middle point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has fallen away after that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in efficiency per pass attempt over the latter part of the season, putting him just a single spot ahead of peers.

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