Joe Burrow’s league-leading stats alone won’t be enough to earn him the NFL’s Most Valuable Player honor. The quarterback for Cincinnati would also need to achieve something even more difficult: defy decades of historical precedence.
Burrow has put up the kind of flashy stats needed to make it into the MVP discussion, much like two-time champion Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills, and Saquon Barkley of the Philadelphia Eagles. In his last eight games, Burrow has thrown for three or more touchdowns, for a two-month total of 27 touchdowns against only five interceptions.
But what is unique and distinguishes Burrow from his Pro Bowl teammates is that, despite playing on a fringe playoff candidate, he has passed for a league-high 4,641 yards and 42 touchdowns, the fifth-lowest interception rate, and the fifth-highest completion %.
The Bengals had a 1-4 start and were just 4-8 as of December 1. But after four straight victories, they are 8-8 going into Saturday’s regular-season finale against Pittsburgh, where they will compete with Miami (8-8) and Denver (9-7) for the AFC’s final, unclaimed playoff berth. With a victory, Denver can guarantee the final position.
The last player to win MVP but miss the playoffs was O.J. Simpson in 1973, according to NBC Sports Research. Furthermore, Detroit’s 9-7 record in 1997, despite the outstanding play of Barry Sanders, who shared the MVP title with Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, was the poorest record by a team with an MVP.
Voters are drawn to winners of this famous NFL award, but it’s not the only one. When Tennessee went 8-8 in 2009, running back Chris Johnson became the final Offensive Player of the Year to miss the playoffs. According to NBC Sports Research, that is also the worst record for any team to earn an Offensive Player of the Year.
Therefore, a record of.500 or higher has been the standard for both MVP and Offensive Player of the Year. The momentum supporting Burrow’s candidacy has continued to grow despite this.
Cowboys standout linebacker Micah Parsons stated last week on his podcast, The Edge with Micah Parsons, that he should unquestionably win MVP. The crucial element for Parsons was the fact that Burrow accomplished all of that in spite of injuries to the team’s defense and both starting offensive tackles. These players’ duties include shielding quarterbacks from defenders who rush around the edge of the offensive line.
Parsons remarked, “He looks unstoppable right now.” His accuracy and timing. Everything. It’s not just me, if you ask anyone in the league at the moment. In the locker room, we have discussed it. The best quarterback we faced, we said, was Joe Burrow. This year, we also performed at Lamar.
In addition, retired Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman stated during this week’s Monday Night Football broadcast that if Burrow were given an MVP vote, he would pick him. (Aikman has a well-established admiration for Burrow; in early December, he also referred to Burrow as “perhaps my favorite player of all time.”)
With only two of the NFL’s 14 playoff spots still up for grabs, the MVP race is one of the few remaining areas of fascination during a time when there is little suspense in the game. Bettors still anticipate Allen as the favorite to win his first MVP, after his 41 total touchdowns and career-low six interceptions pushed the Bills to a 13-3 record and the No. 2 seed in the AFC despite a receiving corps many analysts in the preseason believed was depleted of playmakers. Allen has created moments that voters find hard to overlook, such as delivering top-seeded Kansas City its lone defeat and scoring touchdowns in both historic fashions and quantities late in the season.
In addition to leading the league in 14 pass plays of 40 yards or more, Jackson has 43 total touchdowns in Baltimore and has had his most accurate season as a quarterback, helping the 11-5 Ravens win a division title. Additionally, Barkley is just 101 yards away from setting the all-time single-season record and last week became just the ninth player in NFL history to surpass 2,000 running yards in a season.
According to odds analyzed by Covers, Burrow has thefourth-best oddsin most sportsbooks. Burrow s statistics speak for themselves. Yet so, too, does his team s standing as third in its own division. Burrow is trying to avoid the distinction of becoming the first quarterback since Russell Wilson, in 2017, to lead the NFL in passing yards and touchdowns but miss the playoffs.
Asked about the MVP race this week, Burrowtold reporters, I ll win one one day. But he said he doubted it would be this season.
Usually, you ve got to win your division, he said. That s how it s voted. I don t necessarily disagree with it, I would say.
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