NFL MVP: Why Josh Allen deserves to win, plus Tom Rock's other end-of-season award picks

There are plenty of quarterbacks who have posted better numbers than Josh Allen this season.

Nine of them have thrown for more passing yards than he has. Five have thrown more touchdown passes and six have better passer ratings. He doesn’t even lead the league in rushing touchdowns at his position. And the most important stat of all? Three have won more of their starts than Allen.

But no one has been more singularly intertwined with the success of his team, no one has done more with less around him and no one has stood out in the biggest situations the way Allen has with the Bills. That’s why he should win the league’s Most Valuable Player award.

It’s not a runaway race, of course. Lamar Jackson might normally have cruised to a second straight and third overall honor. If Joe Burrow can will the Bengals to the postseason he should definitely get consideration for one of the all-time outstanding statistical performances. Sam Darnold, Jared Goff, Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry deserve their due praises as well.

In terms of value — and in being the most valuable — the impacts they have had on their teams this season haven’t measured up to Allen’s. While Jackson gets to throw passes to Zay Flowers and Mark Andrews and hand off to Henry, Burrow has Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins out running routes, and Darnold gets to chuck it up to Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, Allen’s supporting cast has fewer stars than a night sky during a Lake Effect storm.

His numbers are more than pretty good, too. He has thrown for 3,731 yards and 28 touchdowns — including one to himself that included a glorious dive through the snow! — while rushing for another 531 yards and 12 scores, none bigger than the 26-yarder to finish off the Week 11 win that prevented Kansas City from starting 10-0 and handed the two-time defending champs their only loss this season. 

There was something about the way Allen approached this season that caught our attention. Maybe it was the determination from losing Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis in free agency and then having his team trade the first-round pick that became Xavier Worthy to Kansas City. Maybe it was just the expectation that after six seasons of steady development and improvement he was poised to peak. Whatever it was, we picked Allen to emerge as the MVP in the preseason.

Prescient? Perhaps. Cemented? Not quite. At the midway point of the season we shifted the pick to Jackson.

Since then, though, Allen has been just as spectacular and even more consistent than the reigning MVP and he gets our final vote (unofficial though it may be in that it doesn’t actually count among the 50 selectors) for the award.

Here is a look at the other prominent NFL awards that will be voted on in the coming weeks and eventually handed out at the “NFL Honors” show on Feb. 6, along with who Newsday predicted would win it at the start of the season and at the midpoint as well:

OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR

SAQUON BARKLEY

Too bad MVP has basically become the “Best Quarterback” Award and this one “Top Non-Quarterback” because Barkley deserves to be included in the conversation for that honor, just as Christian McCaffrey should have gotten more love for it last year and Justin Jefferson and Cooper Kupp the years before that.

Barkley won’t be able to change that dynamic, but he certainly changed a lot of other things. Teams, for one. His legacy for another. The multi-dimensionality of the Eagles’ offense. The devaluation trend of running backs. And now we’ll get to see what he can do in a postseason too, just the second such opportunity of his career.

Barkley has 2,005 rushing yards without playing the Giants on Sunday. Even if he were to play in that game and get the 101 yards needed to break Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record it would get a 17-game asterisk. But there are other bars Barkley already cleared this year — cleared like a backwards hurdle of a would-be tackler, a metaphor we never knew existed until he gave it to us — without needing the extra contest.

He broke the Eagles' franchise record for rushing yards, is just the ninth player to reach 2,000 rushing yards and leads the league in yards from scrimmage (2,283) by 330 over the next closest player (Henry). Oh, and while he missed out on a bunch of scoring opportunities due to his team’s short-yardage tush-pushing tendencies, he became just the third player in NFL history with four rushing touchdowns of 60 yards or more in a season, joining Jim Brown and Adrian Peterson to do it. Barkley also had four 60-plus yard touchdown runs for the Giants . . . but over six seasons.

Basically he became everything the Giants thought he could be when they drafted him and everything they feared he would become when they let him walk away.

Preseason pick: Ja’Marr Chase

Midseason pick: Derrick Henry

DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR

MYLES GARRETT

It’s been hard to lock in on a standout for this award because so many players have made their case for it at varying times this season. There were weeks when it seemed as if everyone from Dexter Lawrence to Xavier McKinney, from Leonard Williams to Patrick Surtain II, felt worthy. Heck, if you only watched the Jets and Giants play for the first few weeks you would have to give the award to Andrew Van Ginkel!

Consistency is the key for this award, though, and for that Garrett should receive his second straight honor. In a year when hardly anything else has gone right for the Browns, Garrett never let up and remained a dominant player. He may not have wrecked games, but that’s mostly because his team was hardly ever in them.

Still, with one game to go, he is tied for the league lead in sacks (14.0 with Trey Hendrickson) with nearly as many hurries (13), leads the NFL in tackles for a loss (21) and has three forced fumbles with one fumble recovery. This year he also became the first player in NFL history to record at least 14 sacks in four consecutive years and surpassed 100 for his career.

Garrett’s win of the award last year created a bit of a stir as many thought it should have gone to Watt who led the league with 19.0 sacks. Watt was among them. Garrett said this year that Watt owed him “an apology” for suggesting on social media he’d been snubbed when the trophy went to Garrett. Watt was certainly in position to claim the hardware this season but a bit of a late swoon should swing things toward Garrett who had two sacks last week against the Dolphins.

Preseason pick: Maxx Crosby

Midseason pick: T.J. Watt

COACH OF THE YEAR

KEVIN O’CONNELL

One of the best scenes of the season came last week when Sam Darnold entered the victorious Vikings locker room and was hoisted up on the shoulders of his teammates in celebration. It wasn’t the quarterback’s reaction to that which stood out, though. Off to the side providing a different angle of the festivities was a camera that happened to catch O’Connell standing still, with his back against a wall, smiling the proud grin of a mentor and developer.

O’Connell led Darnold, a quarterback whose previous six seasons had been far from spectacular, and the Vikings, a team that was resigned to a rebuild after losing Kirk Cousins and drafting J.J. McCarthy as the projected starter, to that party and the ones that await. Minnesota spent most of the season in the shadow while the Lions dominated the division and the conference, but now with one game remaining they have a chance to beat Detroit and claim the top spot in both.

Where other teams routinely botch late-game time management and decision-making, Minnesota has been exquisite in its game-planning. Seven of the team’s 14 victories have been comeback wins and seven have been one-possession games. But overcoming McCarthy’s preseason knee injury, pivoting to Darnold, and making all of it work as well as it has with a passing offense and scoring defense both ranked in the top 5, is why O’Connell should become the first Vikings coach to win this award since Bud Grant in 1969.

Preseason pick: DeMeco Ryans

Midseason pick: Dan Quinn

OFFENSIVE ROOKIE

JAYDEN DANIELS

Even without looking at the stats or standout plays, Daniels deserves this one based on what he has meant to the Commanders and their new culture. That’s a word that gets used a lot, probably too much. But it’s undeniable that a shift has taken place in Washington. It stems from new ownership, new management and a new coach, sure, but none of it would have mattered without the new quarterback. In a draft class that looks like it could produce a number of franchise quarterbacks, Daniels’ impact has been tops.

As for those numbers, Daniels leads all NFL rookie quarterbacks in passing yards (3,530) and is tied with Bo Nix for touchdown passes (25). He’s thrown just nine interceptions; Nix has 12 and Drake Maye has 10. Daniels has also scored six rushing touchdowns and set an NFL rookie quarterback record with 864 rushing yards.

Daniels has also become one of the most clutch quarterbacks in the NFL. Five of his touchdown passes have come in the final 30 seconds of regulation or overtime, which is two more than any quarterback, rookie or veteran, has had in any single season since the 1970 merger.

Preseason pick: Marvin Harrison Jr.

Midseason pick: Jayden Daniels

DEFENSIVE ROOKIE

JARED VERSE

The Rams hadn’t made a first-round draft pick since 2016 before they selected Verse in April. It was worth the wait.

Verse has immediately become one of the best players on a playoff-bound defense that lost Aaron Donald to retirement during the offseason. His 4.5 sacks may not stand out but he has recorded 72 quarterback pressures which is the second-most all-time by a rookie through 16 games. He’s also forced two fumbles, recovered two, and batted down two passes. He has 11 tackles for a loss.

Braden Fiske, another current Ram and former Florida State teammate of Verse, leads NFL rookies with 8.0 sacks. Normally that’s how the award is determined. But Verse has had a bigger impact on the team and the defense and should develop quickly into a game-changing player the likes of previous Rookie of the Year winners such as Will Anderson, Micah Parsons, Nick and Joey Bosa, and, of course, Donald himself.

Preseason pick: Jared Verse

Midseason pick: Jared Verse

COMEBACK PLAYER OF THE YEAR

JOE BURROW

There are so many ways to define this award. What, exactly, are players coming back from?

If you consider in-season adversity then maybe Bryce Young should be considered for rebounding from a dreadful start to his second season, getting benched, then returning the lineup and suddenly playing like something close to worthy of last year’s first overall pick. Or maybe it’s about career potholes. In that case look at Darnold, projected to be the Vikings’ backup in the preseason, who has instead become the steadfast leader of a team that could wind up with the first seed in the NFC playoffs. He could become the second straight player to win this award while overcoming the same career ailment: Having played for the Jets. Last year Joe Flacco claimed the honor for the Browns even though Damar Hamlin had come back from near death in the previous year.

In October, The Associated Press, which tabulates all of these official awards, told its 50 voters that the “spirit” of the award is to honor someone who has faced illness, physical adversity or other circumstances that led to missed playing time the previous year. In other words: Sorry, Sam.

So that leaves Burrow, the quarterback whose numbers would have put him firmly in the MVP (“Best Quarterback”) chatter — and still might — were the Bengals a better team. Burrow headed into this weekend leading the NFL in passing yards (4,641) and touchdowns (42). This after missing the back end of last season with a ruptured ligament in his throwing wrist that required surgery.

Burrow has already won this award once. He came back from a 2020 torn ACL to lead the Bengals to the Super Bowl and win it in 2021. The only other player to win it twice? Chad Pennington in 2006 and 2008. The latter one was with the Dolphins… and also for essentially for having overcome the Jets who released him earlier that season after acquiring Brett Favre. Running back Paul Lowe did win AFL Comeback Player of the Year in 1963 and 1965 for the Chargers.

Preseason pick: Aaron Rodgers

Midseason pick: Kirk Cousins

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.