Buffalo Rumblings
Some see the MVP as the best player who proves most valuable to their team (and the league), other see MVP as the best player with the biggest stats.
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson will have to wait a little longer to claim the “MV3. “ Although most unbiased observers would agree that the 2018 first-round pick had a fantastic year by almost any statistical measure, curious onlookers are left to wonder what exactly the criteria is in the minds of MVP voters after nine balloters who made Lamar Jackson their Associated Press First-Team All-Pro quarterback made a shift when the votes turned to AP NFL MVP.
In the last day, debate has raged between not just fans on social media, but also between MVP voters and other NFL analysts. The crux of the issue? How the same voter set who selected Lamar Jackson as the first-team All-Pro quarterback could also select Josh Allen as the league MVP.
Anakin Skywalker would be proud of the adamant responses by some of the MVP decision detractors: “This is outrageous! It’s unfair! How can you be the first-team All-Pro QB and NOT be an MVP!?”
One of the issues, of course, is that the voters are not the same year over year. Media outlets can choose to offer their designated MVP vote to whomever in their employ they wish, and it makes the task of determining exactly how to isolate the standards for an MVP vote versus a first-team All-Pro vote even more difficult.
ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky (one of the confirmed voters who had Lamar Jackson as his First-Team All Pro but Josh Allen as his NFL MVP) on “Get Up” explained that, for him, there was a distinction between “best” and “most valuable.” His fellow panelist Dominique Foxworth scoffed at the notion, calling it “semantics foolishness.”
The Ringer’s Lindsay Jones has also said that she was one of the voters who had Lamar as the First-Team All-Pro and Allen as the MVP. She outlined her thinking in a piece for the publication. Jones made the clear distinction that MVP “is not strictly an award for the best quarterback” and that the award was “open to narrative considerations in a way that, (to her), All-Pro voting is not.” She discussed Allen’s efficiency and highlight moments, but ended with this statement:
And (Allen) did it while leading the Bills to the no. 2 seed in the AFC in what most of us thought would be a reset year for Buffalo after the Bills traded away star wide receiver Stefon Diggs and moved on from several prominent defensive players in cost-saving moves. Value is impossible to cleanly define, but Allen earned this award. It felt impossible to choose, and nearly as hard to justify, but I stand by it. There was no voter fatigue for me, no boredom in a repeat winner, or hesitancy to pick Jackson for a third time.
The context of what Josh Allen did mattered to nine voters enough to...
