The 2025 NFL MVP race was one of the closest of all-time, with Josh Allen narrowly beating out Lamar Jackson to win the 2024 NFL MVP award despite Jackson being named the 2024 first-team All Pro by the same organization and group of voters that select both awards. 

I’ve never seen that before. And it takes a lot to surprise me, especially since I was there when Tony Dungy gave Bobby Wagner an MVP vote (under the old system where each voter got one selection). Even more surprising, and perhaps the new standard-setter for bizarre decision-making in terms of voting for the MVP, is that one of the 50 voters on the Associated Press panel actually believed that Jackson wasn’t even one of the two most valuable players in the NFL this season.

Actually, scratch that. The voter in question, Jim Miller, former NFL player and now a SirusXM radio host, actually didn’t believe Jackson was one of the THREE most valuable players in the NFL during 2024. Miller voted for Allen first as MVP, Saquon Barkley second, Joe Burrow third, Jackson fourth and Patrick Mahomes fifth on his ballot. 

To each his own and whatnot, but suggesting Jackson was the fourth most valuable player in the NFL this season is crazy town. I’m willing to hear an argument that Barkley was massively important to the Eagles making the playoffs, even if I wholly disagree he was remotely close to being the most valuable player based on how modern football is played. And Burrow was incredible this season, and his defense let him down no doubt, but the Bengals didn’t even manage to make the playoffs. If you’re that valuable you’re in the bracket. I wholeheartedly believe Allen was correctly voted as the Most Valuable Player in football this year and thought he was going to get shafted after the All-Pro teams came out (the betting markets agreed by the way). But even then it’s pretty hard to fathom voting Jackson fourth.

Math is hard enough already, but it gets really convoluted when you start figuring out how this went awry. Let’s be clear: Miller’s vote did not cost Jackson the 2024 MVP. I wanted to suggest it was primarily the number of votes, the eligibility of multiple positions for MVP and the point differential between the two voting systems that allowed us to end up where we are. But it looks like it might simply be an unheard of case of people completely flipping their votes.

Jackson and Allen were either first or second on every single MVP ballot (except one), which was a slight change from the All-Pro voting, where Jackson got 30 first-place votes, Allen got 18 and Burrow got two.

The bigger change is that Allen, in the MVP voting, received 27 first-place votes, while Jackson received 22. No one else received a first-place vote for MVP, unlike the All-Pro teams. 

Let’s presume, for the sake of figuring out the math and not having all the All-Pro selections by voter available to us, that Allen received both of the Burrow first-place votes. 

That gets Allen to 20 first-place votes, but that’s still seven first-place votes shy of where he ended up! Which means that several voters decided to vote Jackson first-team All-Pro and Allen first-place MVP. 

It’s not as weird as giving Jackson a fourth-place MVP vote, but it’s pretty bizarre.