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Usually, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year trophy adheres to a simple pattern. It often serves as a form of mea culpa. Sorry we underestimated your squad in our pre-campaign projections.

Theoretically, it's a direct path: the skipper who orchestrated the biggest turnaround receives the prize. In reality, it sparks an yearly debate about expectations and whether we're actually honoring excellent leadership or just the greatest upset.

But this year's competition is distinctly unique. The group of contenders is exceptionally strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been messy, with recent conference winners declining and recent underperformers ascending together. During an ordinary season, a coach guiding the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the clear favorite. Yet in this wild and entertaining year, he's competing with five other elite coaches.

Here is how the projected vote could shake out.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love signal-callers. This is a tradition. Sean McVay in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. A third in 2022. If you fix a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

Ben Johnson hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unlocked him. Given a proper ecosystem, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his special ability. From Week 9, the Bears rank number four in offensive Expected Points Added per play. This isn't a lucky run – it's consistent dominance. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, less reckless, and has willingly surrendered to the scheme instead of improvising. It is an attack designed entirely in Johnson's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy helping of play-action passes and a innovative passing attack that frees wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to spin big plays from broken plays.

The coach arrived to the Bears with a clear offensive vision. Almost each decision – rebuilding the offensive line, featuring the pass-catchers, turning Williams into a timing-based thrower – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie head coach. And it's even more uncommon yet for a coach who walked into the building with the level of hype Johnson did. For consecutive straight offseasons, he was the most sought-after candidate on the head coaching market. But when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are no guarantees. Somehow, Johnson has met the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not just to be a scheme dork but the type of leader that can inject new life into an organization.

During a normal year, Johnson would be the clear-cut choice. Yet this is not a typical season!

The area where his candidacy comes slightly into trouble is on defense. The Chicago defense currently rank 25th in defensive efficiency. They are living on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously unreliable. Defensive minds can stress ball disruption, but no one can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is real. He's not higher because luck is doing too much of the defense's work. With a few breaks of the ball, the team would be two victories worse off. It's been an remarkable transformation, and the core is established for long-term winning. But Johnson comes up just short here.

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

Coen is in a similar position to his counterpart. He's another rookie head coach who has orchestrated a rapid turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete all-around ball of his career. And he's also spearheaded the transformation of a defense that now sits at number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

What's more notably, he has mastered the leadership stuff, which wasn't a given following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an exceptionally inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the ideal coaching mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, Coen bet on first-timers. From the head coach on down to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jaguars are stocked with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting in theory, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everybody is learning a their job on the fly. But he has managed to bring everyone and everything together.

Following an initial strong start, there was a chance that the season would veer off the track. A mid-year setback had the team stumbling once more. That's typically when coaches overcorrect. Coen did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing home-run answers and started seeking sustainable ones. Coen refocused the attack around his playmakers and the ground attack, and encouraged his QB to use his mobility more.

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

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

Each Strong of the Year case has a defining decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative play-caller might have derailed the season in October. Rather, it shaped it. Through the middle point of the year, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player front-runner. He has fallen away since that hot streak, slipping to 23rd in efficiency per pass attempt over the second half of the season, placing him only a single place ahead of other QBs.

Still