Who’s the Rightful NFL MVP?

As the NFL season winds down, Ravens fans are once again fully embroiled in MVP talk, and the push for Lamar Jackson to take home the award for the third time is on. But while I do think that Jackson is the choice, I am going to say something that may make me unpopular among certain segments of Ravens fans:

I think Josh Allen is awesome. He is one of the coolest quarterbacks I have ever seen and has a singularly unique skill set, and is worthy of every bit of praise he receives. While the nature of social media means that the opposing fan bases have been tearing each other down, this has been the best MVP race I have seen as a football fan. It is rare that two great quarterbacks have their best seasons intersect (there wasn’t a single season with a major Tom Brady/Peyton Manning MVP controversy for example), but that is exactly what we have been getting from Jackson and Allen.

They consistently lead the league in all wholesale advanced metrics (Allen leads in EPA/Play and total EPA while Jackson leads in Aaron Schatz’s DVOA and DYAR metrics, as well as ESPN’s QBR), and have consistently thrilled fans on a week-to-week basis. As great as Joe Burrow has been, Jackson and Allen have simply been in a different orbit. And as much as one may be convinced that their choice is the right one, the reality is that this race is really close. Both players have had great seasons with similar quality surroundings (I would argue Allen has a better offensive line while Jackson has better skill guys, and both have great offensive coordinators).

With that in mind, I think it is worth breaking their seasons down not in a toxic nature that tries to tear the other down in 280 characters or less, but that actually state the case both for and against each winning the MVP. These are two of the most talented and exciting quarterbacks to ever play the game, and this MVP debate deserves the hype in the moment that it will undoubtedly receive in romanticized nostalgia decades from now.

Also before I start, a quick note to the Football Gods who have made their preferences for the result of the 2024 season very clear: I am in no way disrespecting Patrick Mahomes. MVP is a regular season award and he has not been the best regular season quarterback, but that does not take anything away from what he has done or what he can do to both the Ravens and Bills in the playoffs. As much as you seem to be finding excuses to give the Chiefs karmic favor, I cannot emphasize enough the degree to which that is not currently happening. If you need, let me put it in all caps: I AM NOT DISRESPECTING THE CHIEFS.

Sincerely,

Josh

Ok, now back to the MVP discussion.

The Case for Josh Allen

Why Josh Allen is the MVP

Allen is putting together one of the greatest combinations of creating big plays and avoiding negative plays that the sport has ever seen from a quarterback. He has only thrown six interceptions this season after throwing 18 last year, and he leads the league in both big-time throws and big-time throw rate. Jackson has done a slightly better job at avoiding interceptions, meaning Allen’s 7.1% big-time throw rate and 2.6% turnover-worthy play rate according to PFF ultimately plays to a draw when compared to Jackson’s 6.0% big-time throw rate and 1.5% turnover-worthy play rate. But Allen separates himself from Jackson when he does not throw the ball on designed passing plays. This may seem counterintuitive because Jackson is the greatest running quarterback in the history of the sport, but Allen’s superpower is not just his own prolific rushing, but his sack avoidance. Jackson’s development into an elite sack avoider himself has been a remarkable development, but Allen is simply on a different stratosphere. While Jackson’s 23 sacks taken and 12.2% pressure-to-sack rate place him third in the league among qualified quarterbacks in both categories, Allen is taking a sack on only 8% of his pressures and has taken a measly 14 on the whole year. According to The Athletic’s Robert Mays, only ten teams since 2000 have taken that few sacks in a season, and three of them have come from Peyton Manning. Rushing quarterbacks will usually create some sacks on failed scrambles, which is why the greatest sack avoiders in the history of the sport are players like Manning, Tom Brady, and Dan Marino, who combined subtle pocket movements with elite football intellect that allowed them to always know where to go with the ball and get it out quickly. Having that level of sack avoidance while also creating on scrambles is unheard of. According to Sam Schwartzstein, the brains behind Amazon Prime’s Next Gen Stats Thursday Night Football alternate broadcast, Allen is the only quarterback in football to gain more EPA on scrambles than he lost on sacks. That simply does not happen, even among the most prolific scramblers.

What’s more, as much as many Ravens fans would like to wave away Allen’s red zone prowess as simply being the product of quarterback sneaks, the reality is that if everyone could do it they would. Allen’s dominance in short yardage doesn’t only outpace other quarterbacks outside of Philadelphia, it is remarkable for any player. Allen tied the Bills franchise record for career rushing touchdowns this past weekend, a significant feat for a quarterback in an organization that has employed multiple Hall of Fame running backs for the majority of their careers.

And in case you think Allen is just a QB sneak merchant, Mays points out that Allen has scored 25 touchdowns on scrambles since 2018, with Mahomes being the only other player in double digits during that time (14). Allen has a combination of skills never seen before in the history of the sport, and they have never coalesced to create a greater season than this one. The most basic job of every athlete is to make great plays and avoid bad plays, and no quarterback has done that better than Josh Allen in 2024.

Why Josh Allen is not the MVP

MVP is a full-season award, and with that in mind, we simply need to take into account Allen’s performances in Weeks 4 and 5 against the Ravens and Texans, both Bills losses. He went 25-for-59 over those two weeks, averaging just 155.5 yards, while throwing for just one touchdown and running for none. The Ravens game was a true blowout, a 35-10 drubbing where his -0.22 EPA/Play ranks below any performance Jackson has put up this year. The Texans game was a closer game against a defense that Jackson absolutely shredded just one week ago, while Allen went a measly 9-for-30 in a 23-20 loss. MVP debates too often forget the totality of the season, but the reality is if those two performances had come in the past two weeks the debate would be considered over in Jackson’s favor. I do not think that type of premium on recent performance is right, but in that same vein of attempting to take the totality of a season into account, we should not ignore those performances either.

With a race this close with a standard this high, you just cannot put up many stinkers. In a season where both have so often been at their best, Allen’s worst has simply been worse than Jackson’s worst.

The Case for Lamar Jackson

Why Lamar Jackson is the MVP

Allen and Jackson may be very close statistically, but Jackson’s impact goes way beyond what happens when the ball is in his hands. Perhaps no player in the history of the sport has influenced every step of the other 21 players on the field the way Jackson does. His effect on the total run game has been well established at this point – the Ravens have ranked top three in yards before contact in every year of his career, and even in 2021 he dragged the corpses of Latavius Murray, Devonta Freeman, and Le’Veon Bell to the top five in rush EPA at the time of his injury.

But this year, the ceiling of a Jackson-led run game reached a whole new level with the arrival of Derrick Henry. Henry’s stats are well-established at this point – he would easily win the rushing title if it weren’t for Saquon Barkley’s historic season – but what is most notable is how he is getting his yards. He is still tied for third in the league in yards after contact per attempt because he is still one of the best backs in football, but his 3.1 yards before contact easily stands as a career-high. Henry spent his time in Tennessee with 14-16 eyes on him at all times on early downs and is now suddenly playing on easy mode. Jackson’s threat as a runner causes second-level linebackers to flow more slowly towards the ball on handoffs, and when he gives the ball on read options a defender is automatically taken out of the play.

Take these screenshots from three different Henry runs from just the first drive of the Ravens-Steelers Week 16 matchup.

The Steelers made a decision to consistently force the give on option plays – in all these plays the unblocked man on the edge is defending Jackson and has no chance of reaching Henry, who has plenty of green grass in front of him. More simply, Jackson’s mere existence means that defenses are deciding that having Henry running with a head of steam against widened edges is the preferable option. That is a superpower no player in the history of the sport has ever possessed – and when fully unleashed it has been downright scary.

Jackson’s development into becoming one of the league’s best passers while maintaining his spot as the greatest rushing quarterback of all time has been discussed ad nauseum, but I still think his overall gravity on an offense is not discussed enough. In that spirit, It is worth taking a step back from the week-to-week minutia of the season and marveling at what Jackson and Henry have accomplished. While the Ravens are hanging around the top of the league in most offensive metrics, they have also played an incredibly difficult schedule of opposing defenses and DVOA (which takes into account strength-of-schedule) tells the full story. The Ravens have nearly twice as high a rush DVOA as any other team in the league. They also lead the league in offensive DVOA, and the difference between them and second-place Buffalo is larger than the difference between Buffalo and ninth-place San Francisco.

But the Ravens are not just separating themselves from the rest of the pack this year; this is an all-time great offense. DVOA goes back to 1978, and during that time the Ravens have the fourth-best offense ever measured. I do not think it is hyperbolic to say that the pairing of Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry has been to the run game what the pairing of Tom Brady and Randy Moss was to the pass. Jackson leads all quarterbacks in yards per carry, but is also directly responsible for Henry leading all running backs in the same stat.

Lamar Jackson is having a historic season when he has the ball in his hands, but the way he affects the game when he doesn’t is what separates him from the pack in 2024.

Why Lamar Jackson is not the MVP

For some reason interceptions are treated in basic stat lines as the only way a quarterback can turn the ball over, but they of course can also fumble the ball. While a quarterback has little control over who controls a fumble they are way more in control of whether or not they hold on to the ball than they are of the random bounce that could be the difference between an interception and a big play. While it is incredibly hard to find an area where Jackson struggles statistically in 2024, his ball security has simply been worse than Allen’s. He has fumbled the ball ten times compared to Allen’s five, and they have come both on drop backs and down the field on rushes. They may not show up in a television graphic, but a lost fumble is just as much of a turnover as an interception, and there is simply no getting around the fact that Jackson has put the ball on the ground twice as often.

The Pick: Lamar Jackson

What gets lost in the minutia of the mind-numbing week-to-week MVP debate is that it is ultimately a legacy award that we should be able to look back on decades from now and feel like the right choice was made. And what the Ravens offense has done this season will stand the test of time. The success of the team in the playoffs will determine the precise nature of their legacy, but MVP is a regular season award and what this offense has accomplished up to this point has been historic. As much of an ageless wonder as Derrick Henry is, running backs do not just have their most efficient seasons at age 30. Henry is great no matter what, but the degree of his dominance is a direct reflection of who he is handing the ball to him. This season has been the full realization of what a Lamar Jackson offense can look like, and the results have been remarkable.

Both Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen are having historic quarterback seasons, but only one of them is the gravitational center point of one of the greatest offenses of all time. And that makes him my MVP.

The post Who’s the Rightful NFL MVP? appeared first on Russell Street Report.

Source: https://russellstreetreport.com/2025/01/03/street-talk/whos-the-rightful-nfl-mvp/