We’re through three weeks of the 2025 NFL season. We’re starting to learn who the real teams are and who the nobodies are. Football is the ultimate team sport, so when it comes to the awards at the NFL Honors in February, being on a real team makes it a whoooole lot easier to get the big-time kudos.
That’s especially true when it comes to who wins the NFL MVP. If you’re looking to get in on that action, and you don’t want to pay a premium on the two favorites in the Baltimore Ravens' Lamar Jackson and the Buffalo Bills' Josh Allen, these are the guys you want to look at.
Not Allen, not Jackson, not Love, not Herbert
Before we get into it, it's important to know who wins this award. You might be thinking, ‘Patrick Mahomes is +1900? That’s good value. I like him.’ That’s a nice thought, but a dumb process.
In the past 25 seasons, there have been 26 NFL MVPs (Steve McNair and Peyton Manning had the same number of votes in 2003). Of those 26 players, four were running backs. This award doesn’t go to those guys anymore, so we’re going to take them out.
That means that we’re looking at 22 quarterbacks. Of those 22 players, 20 of them were on teams that finished first in their division. Of those 20 teams, 15 of them were the best seed in their conference. That means, since 2000, the NFL MVP has been the quarterback of a conference champion 68 percent of the time. That’s huge.
For reference, these are the numbers we’re looking at (italicized guys are running backs):
Year | Player | Record | Division | Conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
'24 | J. Allen | 13-4 | 1st | 2nd |
'23 | L. Jackson | 13-4 | 1st | 1st |
'22 | P. Mahomes | 14-3 | 1st | 1st |
'21 | A. Rodgers | 13-4 | 1st | 1st |
'20 | A. Rodgers | 13-3 | 1st | 1st |
'19 | L. Jackson | 14-2 | 1st | 1st |
'18 | P. Mahomes | 12-4 | 1st | 1st |
'17 | T. Brady | 13-3 | 1st | 1st |
'16 | M. Ryan | 11-5 | 1st | 2nd |
'15 | C. Newton | 15-1 | 1st | 1st |
'14 | A. Rodgers | 12-4 | 1st | 2nd |
'13 | P. Manning | 13-3 | 1st | 1st |
'12 | A. Peterson | 10-6 | 2nd | 6th |
'11 | A. Rodgers | 15-1 | 1st | 1st |
'10 | T. Brady | 14-2 | 1st | 1st |
'09 | P. Manning | 14-2 | 1st | 1st |
'08 | P. Manning | 12-4 | 2nd | 5th |
'07 | T. Brady | 16-0 | 1st | 1st |
'06 | L. Tomlinson | 14-2 | 1st | 1st |
'05 | S. Alexander | 13-3 | 1st | 1st |
'04 | P. Manning | 12-4 | 1st | 3rd |
'03 | S. McNair | 12-4 | 2nd | 5th |
'03 | P. Manning | 12-4 | 1st | 3rd |
'02 | R. Gannon | 11-5 | 1st | 1st |
'01 | K. Warner | 14-2 | 1st | 1st |
'00 | M. Faulk | 10-6 | 2nd | 6th |
Sure, the MVP doesn’t go to the best player in the league; it goes to the best player on one of the best teams in the NFL. That’s important to remember.
To go back to the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes thing: Kansas City has a 1-2 record right now, and is 2.5 games behind the Chargers in the AFC West. Yeah, the season is still young, but for him to win his third MVP, the Chiefs would only be able to lose one… maybe two more games for the entire rest of the season. Seems unlikely.
Because of this incredibly small pool of guys who can win the MVP, it changes the definition of “dark horse.” Would it be crazy if Dak Prescott won the MVP? Yes. It would be unbelievably crazy, so he’s not a dark horse. These are realistic long shots. (All of these odds are from DraftKings Sportsbook as of Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2025, at 1 a.m.)
Daniel Jones +8000:
Let me welcome you to the first thing that you’ve ever read that says, “Daniel Jones could be the NFL MVP.”
Daniel Jones could be the NFL MVP. It all begins with an apparent statement of fact: the Indianapolis Colts are, at a minimum, a good football team, and they have the chance to be a really, really good football team.
So far, they’ve played the Dolphins, the Broncos, and the Titans. Good football teams beat bad football teams, and really good football teams embarrass bad football teams. The Colts embarrassed the Dolphins and the Titans, and snuck a win past the (maybe) good Broncos.
The Colts really only have a handful of tough games left on their schedule: Week 4 at the Rams, Week 7 at the Chargers, Week 12 at the Chiefs, and Week 14 at the Seahawks. They still get to play five more games against the rest of the AFC South. Aside from the Jaguars, that’s a super light schedule. You don’t have to look hard to find 10 more wins for Indianapolis. A 13-4 record can be enough to get the top seed in an AFC that’s cannibalizing itself.
Baker Mayfield +1800:
Week 4 seems like the right time to start saying that Baker Mayfield could be the MVP, right? You can pretty much give him the same argument as you could for Daniel Jones: He’s on a good team in a bad division with an easy schedule, which means he has an easier shot at the top seed in the NFC.
The Buccs still have seven games against the Saints, the Panthers, the Falcons, the Dolphins, and the Patriots. Five of those games are at the end of the season, and if Mayfield is competing with Josh Allen for the MVP at the end of the season, his schedule of Falcons, Panthers, Dolphins, Panthers is much better than Allen’s schedule of Patriots, Browns, Eagles, Jets.
The big difference between Mayfield and Jones is that one is Baker Mayfield and the other is Daniel Jones. So… yeah. Mayfield has a little bit more of that je ne sais quoi.
Brock Purdy +6500:
If Brock Purdy wins the MVP, it’s going to be really deserved. The 49ers roster has been decimated by injuries, and aside from Christian McCaffrey, there is almost zero offensive or defensive talent.
The thing that helps him is, once again, a decent schedule. Going into the season, they had one of the easiest strengths of schedules. That’s still kind of true, but it’s going to be much harder to beat teams like the Bears, the Colts, and the Jaguars without having any offensive weapons.
Once Purdy comes back from the shoulder and toe things that he’s dealing with, he’s going to be playing a game of poker where his highest hand can only be a three-of-a-kind. So if he can keep the train rolling and turn the 49ers' 3-0 record into a 14-3 record, it’d be a miracle, and he’d be one of the more deserving guys.
Jared Goff +3500:
Jared Goff was fifth in the MVP voting last season, and the Lions had a 15-2 record. On one hand, that clearly shows what the MVP voters think of Goff. On the other hand, he’s cemented himself in the conversation for winning.
He and the Lions laid a real stinker in their Week 1 game against the Packers, but since then, they’ve been crushing. They dropped a 50-burger on the Bears in Week 2, and then they thoroughly tore up the Ravens’ defense with a 38-point game in Week 3.
The problem is that they have a brutal schedule ahead of them. They still have two games against the Vikings, and games against the Packers, the Eagles, the Buccaneers, and the Rams. That’s a lot of potential losses.
However, if they can get through all that, Goff is going to have a lot of MVP juice going into the end of the season.
By the way, he has a completion percentage of 77.9 percent. He doesn’t have to be a mega-athlete. All he has to do is wheel and deal.
Jalen Hurts +1600:
You could probably consider Jalen Hurts a frontrunner for the MVP, but he’s got one huge thing going against him: the NFL’s opinion of the Tush Push.
After the Eagles’ Week 2 game against the Chiefs, there was a whole lot of conversation about the officiating of the Brotherly Shove. It’s not super surprising, given that Roger Goodell absolutely hates the play and he’ll tell his mouthpieces to slander it as much as possible.
It’d be a kick in the nuts to Goodell if the face of the Tush Push got voted as the most valuable player in the NFL. I can’t imagine he’s going to be cool with that.
As far as performance, we just saw what can happen when the Eagles' offense takes the training wheels off of Hurts. In the first half of the Week 3 game against the Rams, the offense didn’t flow through him, and nothing worked. After halftime, they were down 26-7, and the ball got put in Jalen Hurts’ hands, and he had to win. He did, because that’s really all he does.
If the Eagles can keep that same vibe going and building every week, they’re going to find themselves at the top of the NFC, and Jalen Hurts will have an NFL MVP.