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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year honor follows a straightforward pattern. It frequently functions as a kind of mea culpa. Our apologies we underestimated your team in our pre-campaign forecasts.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who engineered the largest turnaround wins the award. In reality, it fuels an annual debate about expectations and whether we're truly honoring excellent coaching or simply the biggest shock.

Yet the latest competition is fundamentally different. The list of nominees is remarkably strong. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been messy, with recent division winners declining and longtime strugglers ascending in unison. In an typical season, Sean Payton leading the his team to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold favorite. Yet in such a turbulent and entertaining season, he's up against five other elite candidates.

Here is how the projected vote should shake out.

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

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors love quarterbacks. This is a tradition. A certain coach in 2017. Another in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. If you transform a franchise QB, you're halfway home.

The Bears' head coach not only fixed his young quarterback; he's unlocked him. Within an ideal system, the QB has been given the chance to showcase his otherworldly ability. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a brief surge – it's consistent excellence. Under his guidance, the quarterback has become increasingly decisive, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the gameplan rather than improvising. It is an attack designed solely in the coach's vision: a physical ground attack, a consistent dose of play-action passes and a imaginative aerial game that springs wide receiver receivers all over the field. Williams has taken advantage. And when openings haven't been available, he's been able to conjure magic out of nothing.

The coach arrived to Chicago with a defined offensive vision. Virtually each bet – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the tight ends, turning Williams into a rhythm thrower – has paid off. That's rare for a first-year skipper. And it's rarer still for a coach who walked into the organization with the kind of pressure he did. For two straight cycles, he was the hottest name on the head coaching market. But when it comes to selecting a head coach, there are zero sure things. Somehow, he has lived up to expectations – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive genius but the kind of leader that can breathe fresh energy into an organization.

During a normal year, he would be the clear-cut choice. Yet the current is not a typical year!

Where his candidacy runs slightly into trouble is on the defensive side. The Bears currently sit 25th in defensive efficiency. They are surviving on turnovers, and turnovers are notoriously unreliable. Coaches can emphasise ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the ballot because the offensive production is real. He's not higher because variance is doing too much of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple breaks of the ball, the Bears would be two wins behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the foundation is established for sustained success. However he comes up just short in this ranking.

4) Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars, 12-4

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time leader who has engineered a dramatic turnaround. Over the crucial final weeks of the year, he has his franchise quarterback playing the most complete overall ball of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has excelled at the leadership stuff, which was not a guarantee after his initial public appearances and some of his preseason decisions.

The coach took over Jacksonville with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed their staff with the perfect staff mix of new ideas and veteran savvy, he hired first-timers. From the leader on down to coordinators to position coaches, the Jags are stocked with rookies. That type of approach is exciting on paper, but often fails in reality – with other teams are a cautionary tale – because everybody is figuring out a new job on the fly. Yet Coen has pulled the entire group and all elements together.

Following an initial hot start, there was a risk that the campaign would go off the rails. A midseason setback caused the team stumbling once more. That's usually when coaches overcorrect. He did not. Rather, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting sustainable ones. The coach refocused the attack around key players and the ground attack, and asked his QB to use his legs more often.

The outcomes are obvious. The Jaguars have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's No 3 seed. Coen receives the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he took over a skilled team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

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

Every Coach of the Year narrative has a defining decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback choice.

Parting ways from a veteran, bringing in a different quarterback and partnering him with an new play-caller could have ended the season in October. Instead, it shaped it. By the mid point of the year, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player candidate. He has regressed after that time, dropping to 23rd in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the schedule, putting him just one spot ahead of other QBs.

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