Buffalo Payments quarterback Josh Allen is the 2025 NFL MVP after narrowly beating out Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson.
It’s Allen’s first league MVP and makes him the primary Payments quarterback to ever win the award.
It’s also, in some methods, no less than slightly little bit of a shocking consequence.
Allen obtained 27 first-place votes to Jackson’s 23.
They have been the one two gamers within the league to obtain first-place votes.
It caps off a dominant particular person season for Allen that noticed him account for 41 complete touchdowns (28 passing, 12 dashing and one receiving), whereas additionally throwing for 3,731 yards. The largest change in his recreation this season was the way in which he dramatically reduce down on his turnovers and never solely helped carry the Payments offense, but additionally performed essentially the most environment friendly soccer of his profession.
He led the Payments to 13-4 common season report and took them to the AFC Championship Sport the place they fell simply brief — once more — to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs.
So how may or not it’s so shocking when he was so persistently sensible?
There is no such thing as a denying Allen’s brilliance this season, and he was objectively probably the greatest gamers within the NFL.
However it’s a very curious — and engaging — consequence by the voters. Principally as a result of that very same pool of voters decided that Jackson (by a reasonably large margin) was the most effective quarterback within the NFL by voting him because the first-team All-Professional on the place, forward of Allen.
Jackson additionally had the superior numbers throughout the board each passing and dashing.
It has largely been unheard for the voters to separate the distinction on All-Professional and MVP votes and choose completely different gamers for these two awards. This yr, they did.
Was it as a result of they targeted on the subjective “worth” argument and decided that Allen meant extra to the Payments’ success than Jackson did to the Ravens’ success?
An argument may very well be made for that, however Jackson is such a uncommon expertise and probably the greatest dual-threat quarterbacks the league has ever seen. With out him, nothing about their offense works, and we’ve seen the impression of that in recent times when Jackson has needed to miss video games. Not solely are the Ravens considerably worse, however they’ll barely perform offensively and usually are not even aggressive.
Was it voter fatigue and a want to offer any person else an MVP award so Jackson didn’t win a 3rd? If that’s the case, that might be a nasty look on the method. It’s not speculated to be a profession achievement award. It’s speculated to be the MVP for this season, no matter who has received up to now or what number of they’ve received.
Regardless of the case could also be, the voters decided Jackson was the most effective quarterback however that Allen was the most effective and Most Useful Participant. That could be a little shocking. Additionally fascinating.
