ClutchPoints
The NFL announced the top five finalists for the NFL MVP award for the 2024 season on Thursday. This award recognizes not only the best athletes of the 2024 season, but also those who added the most value to their individual teams. Those finals are Josh Allen, Saquon Barkley, Joe Burrow, Jared Goff, and Lamar Jackson.
NFL MVP is a controversial award among many fans of the league. The main source of that controversy is that NFL MVP is dominated by the quarterback position. It is easy to see how we got here with the award. The quarterback position is arguably the most important position in any professional sports, so it stands to reason that the winner will often be a quarterback. However, it is also frustrating that deserving skill-position players face incredibly steep odds for winning the award.
In practice, the NFL MVP award almost always goes to a quarterback whereas the Offensive Player of the Year award feels earmarked for the best skill-position players.
There are some exceptions.
For example, nine non-quarterbacks have won NFL MVP since 1990. All of those winners were running backs, and most of them occurred during the 1990s and early 2000s when the NFL was much more run-centric.
On the other hand, 12 quarterbacks have won Offensive Player of the Year since 1990.
Quarterbacks dominate the top five once again in 2024, and for good reason. This year’s NFL MVP finalists have all had incredible 2024 seasons. Each player deserves discussion for this award based on their merits from the regular season. However, only one can win.
Below we will rank the NFL MVP finalists in order based on who is most deserving to win the award.
It is incredibly difficult to choose between Jackson and Allen for NFL MVP. Now is an especially difficult time to make that choice, as Josh Allen recently beat Lamar Jackson in the playoffs. However, the MVP voters cast their ballots before that game, so we can’t let it cloud our thinking.
Jackson’s resume is simply too good to ignore this season. He passed for 4,172 yards with 41 touchdowns and a mere four interceptions. A couple of those interceptions were incredibly fluky as well. Lamar also added 915 rushing yards and four touchdowns as a rusher.
The only accounting stats that Allen beat Jackson in were rushing touchdowns (12 vs. 4) and rushing first downs (52 vs. 47).
Jackson also managed this production with the presence of Derrick Henry, who commanded 325 carries by himself. There was nobody on the Bills who took that many touches away from Allen, yet Jackson still comes out on top of most accounting stats.
The Bills may be a better team than the Ravens, but Lamar is certainly deserving of this award over Josh Allen.
If this were almost any other year, Allen would be at the top of the list.
Allen...
