Patrick Mahomes is the NFL’s most valuable player, which means he should be the NFL’s Most Valuable Player—straightforward logic that does not always apply to awards voting. The MVP is not just a vote held at the end of the season; it’s a discussion topic starting in September, for better or worse, and so it gets treated like a dramatic show instead of an honest assessment of players’ worths. Mahomes is the league’s best player. He is the most valuable to his team. That should really be all the discussion we need.
This was clear yet again Saturday, when the entire league took an ice bath and Mahomes, predictably, performed his usual individual medley of brilliance. He was the main reason the Chiefs built a 17–0 lead over the Seahawks before winning, 24–10. He is the main reason the Chiefs are now 12–3 and could play in their third Super Bowl in four years. Don’t punish him because he has done this before.
Mahomes sealed the win over the Seahawks with three daggers. He stepped up under pressure and fired a fastball into Travis Kelce’s hands for 20 yards. He hit an open Kelce again for 52 more. A few plays later, on third down, Mahomes scrambled right and dove for the end zone, on the kind of play that so often ends with you thinking the player has scored when in fact a knee or elbow made contact with the ground. But because Mahomes’s body control is not of this world, he somehow managed to rest all his weight on his left hand while his body was horizontal, allowing him to slap the pylon with the football for a touchdown. It was one of those Mahomes plays that really should make you think, “Good God, imagine if Peyton Manning ever even tried to do something like that,” but Mahomes is so casually brilliant that we just sort of shrug.
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Mahomes is the rightful MVP. Can we use a little common sense here? Statistically, visually, adjusting for context—however you do the math, the answer is Mahomes. When the Chiefs traded the most explosive receiver in the league, Tyreek Hill, they were betting on Mahomes making up the difference, and it was an extremely safe bet. His leading rusher is Isiah Pacheco. His two best wide receivers, Juju Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdez-Scantling, are familiar names to fans, but the Steelers and Packers are two of the league’s better-run organizations, and they were willing to let those two guys go without much of a fight.
Let’s not make this more complicated than it needs to be. Is there anybody outside of Philadelphia—or even in Philadelphia—who would seriously rather have Jalen Hurts than Mahomes? This is not a knock on Hurts! He has been great. “I’d rather have Patrick Mahomes” is not an insult. But come on. Put Mahomes on the Eagles, and they would still be having the best season of any team. Put Hurts on the Chiefs, and there would be a dropoff.
Hurts is the Narrative MVP. He is the hot name, the fresh story. Hurts bringing the Eagles back into title contention is a much more interesting story than Mahomes keeping the Chiefs there. This does not mean Hurts is actually a more valuable player than Mahomes.
Dollar for dollar, Hurts—who is still on his rookie deal—is more valuable than Mahomes. But the award is Most Valuable Player, not Most Valuable Contract. The contractual difference between the two of them actually helps explain why Mahomes has been more valuable. Hurts’s low salary gives the Eagles roughly $40 million more to spend on the rest of the roster. This difference is partly why the Eagles were able to add an elite receiver (A.J. Brown) last spring while the Chiefs decided to trade Hill rather than sign him to an extension. Eagles executive Howie Roseman has savvily built the NFL’s most complete team around Hurts.
The Bills’ Josh Allen has also been terrific, and you could make an argument—based on a larger body of work than Hurts has produced—that you would rather have Allen on your team than Mahomes. But Mahomes has been better this year. Allen has a larger margin for error and at times has been a little too eager to take advantage of it.
Who else? Tua Tagavailoa is having a wonderful year, validating the belief many of us had in him when he came out of Alabama, but he’s obviously not as good as Mahomes, no matter what Hill said in the offseason. Micah Parson is a game-wrecker, but he is not as valuable as Mahomes.
MVP debates are fun, but sometimes they are so much fun that the argument overwhelms common sense. You see this in every sport. Voters get numb to perennial greatness and bend over backward to justify voting for somebody other than the best player. Michael Jordan won five MVP awards and should have won more. LeBron James has won four and should have won more. (Baseball voters used to be the worst at voting for the story instead of the best player, but they have become so stat-conscious that they don’t do that nearly as much anymore.)
Mahomes has won one MVP award—in 2018, his first season as Kansas City’s starter. He was the fresh story and the best player in the league that year. Now his numbers are not quite as incredible, but he is probably a better player, because he has learned to manage risk without trying to eliminate it entirely. His two interceptions against the Bills this year illustrated the point. Buffalo made great defensive plays, but Mahomes said afterward he can live with that. There are a lot of great players in the NFL. Mahomes has been the best of them, and he should be MVP.
