SAN FRANCISCO – The NFL MVP award was handed out at NFL Honors Thursday night, and Matthew Stafford edged out Drake Mays in one of the closest races in league history. take home the prize.
Once the NFL season arrived in December, the MVP battle was widely seen as a two-horse race between Stafford and Mays, but they only accounted for 47 of the 50 first-place votes. That means there were three voters who did not put Mays or Stafford at the top of their ballot and those three votes essentially decided the MVP race.
how is that possible? Well, let’s see how the vote works.
The panel that votes on the MVP (and all other awards) is selected by the Associated Press. There are 50 voters and each of them is asked to rank five players on their ballot. A vote for first place is worth 10 points, a vote for second place is worth five points, a vote for third place is worth three points, a vote for second place is worth two points and a vote for fifth place is worth one point.
With that in mind, here’s how the votes for MVP were distributed:
1. Matthew Stafford: 366 points (24 first place votes)
2. Drake May: 361 (23)
3. Josh Allen: 91 (2)
4. Christian McCaffrey: 71 (0)
5. Trevor Lawrence: 49 (0)
Of the three first-place votes that did not go to Stafford or Mays, two went to Josh Allen. So where did that last vote go? It went to Justin Herbert. Yes, Justin Herbert. The voter who placed Herbert at the top of his ballot explained his vote Thursday night.
you can definitely make one Case It’s hard to justify Allen or Herbert winning MVP, but putting them at the top of your ballot. And the strange thing is that our Herbert and Allen voters essentially decided the race.
The final tally was so close that if any of Allen’s or Herbert’s votes had gone in May’s favor, he would have won or at least tied with Stafford.
Consider these two scenarios:
- Scenario 1: If Monson had given his first-place vote to Drake Mays and Herbert was second on his ballot, the Patriots quarterback would have been in a tie for MVP. That one simple change would have turned the race upside down.
- Scenario 2: If Josh Allen had one of the voters put Mays at the top of his ballot, once again, the Patriots QB would have been MVP. Although Monson was overwhelmingly interested in his Herbert ballot, it is still unclear who voted for Allen. The Bills quarterback played in the same division as Maye and couldn’t win it either. You can certainly argue that Allen had to commit a crime, but that’s not necessarily the case. Allen had James Cook in the backfield and Cook led the NFL in rushing yards this year.
In a year where two quarterbacks seemed to be ahead of everyone else, these three voters decided to go the other way with their votes and it helped Stafford take home his first career MVP. Of course, we don’t know for sure that these three votes cost Mays the MVP. If Stafford was ahead of May in all three of these voters, it meant that Stafford was going to win anyway.
It’s okay to think outside the box, but sometimes, you get so far out of the box that you can’t even see the box, and it feels like what’s happened here. If these three voters had gone with Mays at the top of their poll, we would have had a different result. Instead, we got the closest MVP race since 2003 when Peyton Manning finished tied with Steve McNair.
It is worth noting that both Mays and Stafford received at least one third-place vote. The AP released every voter’s complete ballot last year, but that won’t be the case this year, so we won’t know who had Stafford and Mays in third place on their ballot unless the voters themselves decide to reveal that information.
Losing the MVP might actually be a good thing for Mays, as Patriots quarterbacks never win a Super Bowl and MVP in the same year. Tom Brady went to the Super Bowl twice in the same year he won MVP and went 0-2 in those games (2007, 2017). And since 2000, the NFL MVP is 1-9 in the Super Bowl.
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