The NFL schedule in Week 11 had several big games for playoff seeding that could go a long way in determining division winners, the Super Bowl champion, and even the MVP award winner in the 2024 season. Not surprisingly, these big game performances shifted the MVP odds with Josh Allen regaining the lead over Lamar Jackson. A bad game for Lamar in Pittsburgh combined with a victorious moment for Allen to end the Chiefs’ winning streak has Allen (+125 at FanDuel) as the new odds-on favorite for MVP.
We said two weeks ago that those Week 11 games would be significant for the MVP award, but can Allen really sustain this momentum past his bye week while Jackson gets a chance to bounce back on Monday night against the Chargers’ top-ranked defense? If Jackson shreds the Chargers in a win, does he regain the lead? It’s not like Allen can lose to his bye week. Only Daniel Jones does that.
This MVP race looks like it is going to flip a lot of people’s arguments from a year ago on their head. That was when Jackson and Allen were the last two candidates standing, but we shouldn’t be treating 2024 as a two-horse race yet as Detroit quarterback Jared Goff is third in the MVP odds (+800 at FanDuel) and his Lions have the best record and No. 1 scoring offense, two common MVP benchmarks.
This is also such a week-to-week league anymore as you saw it with Goff going from a five-interception game in Houston – a game Detroit still won with 26 points – to leading seven straight touchdown drives for historic offensive perfection against Jacksonville.
But notice that shredding the Jaguars for over 400 passing yards and a perfect passer rating on Sunday afternoon didn’t make Goff the MVP frontrunner. People were too busy watching more important games like Jackson struggling in Pittsburgh, or later when Allen took down the Chiefs and their 15-game winning streak. Those games are on a different scale than scoring 52 points against a team rumored to fire its head coach any day now, right?
That brings us to the point of our study today.
We know MVP awards are dominated by quarterbacks with great stats on great teams that win a lot of games. But do you need to have great stats in wins against great teams too, or can you still win MVP by squashing the scrubs and playing small in the big games?
This usually isn’t how the MVP debate goes, but this is what happens when you don’t have a season with a conventional candidate leading the way. That means someone who is statistically great (volume and efficiency) on a team that’s winning a high rate of its games. We had three of them in 2020 with Aaron Rodgers edging out Patrick Mahomes and Allen for the award. But in recent years, only Mahomes on the 2022 Chiefs was a conventional pick as he led the team to the best record (14-3) with the best statistics and leading the No. 1 offense.
But that’s not where the NFL is with defenses getting the best of offenses on a more routine basis, young quarterbacks struggling to develop, and some veterans not playing their best ball.
That’s why we decided to look at all 30 quarterback seasons to win MVP dating back to Boomer Esiason on the 1988 Bengals to try to get some sense of what might matter down the stretch of this 2024 season. We’ll circle back at the end to this year’s MVP candidates and their big-game resumes in 2024.
Table of Contents
Historical Data on Big Game Performances for NFL MVP Seasons
There is no doubt some hindsight in what counts as a “big game” in the NFL. If you were playing the St. Louis Rams in Week 1 of the 1999 season, you had no idea you were playing a team that would go on to win the Super Bowl with a dominant season. You’d think you were playing a perennial loser who was 4-12 last year and is starting some grocery clerk turned quarterback named Kurt Warner.
On the other hand, some NFL games are obviously big games the moment the schedule is released. We knew opening night this year in Kansas City was a big one with an AFC Championship Game rematch between the Chiefs and Ravens, two preseason favorites for Super Bowl LIX. We knew for months that Sunday’s game between the Chiefs and Bills was a huge one because it always has been since the rivalry started in 2020.
But there are also times when a big game at the moment looks smaller by the end of the season. The 2013 NFL season began in Denver with a rematch between the Broncos and Ravens after their classic playoff duel in double overtime in the playoffs the previous year. Peyton Manning ended up throwing seven touchdown passes that night, kicking off what became an MVP season and a record-breaking one with 55 touchdown passes. But the Ravens, a usually reliable winner, finished 8-8 that year, so it wasn’t a meeting of playoff teams or even winning teams for the 2013 season in the end.
With all of this in mind, we wanted to look at MVP seasons for quarterbacks since 1988 with a breakdown by splits on whether or not their opponents were a playoff team that year or if they finished with a winning record. This is how we’re going to account for “big games” in this sample.
Here are some of those findings, and again, this is based on 30 MVP seasons by quarterbacks since 1988. So, when we say “the only quarterbacks to” below, we mean the only ones out of this list of 30 MVP seasons and not out of all quarterback seasons in history. The numbers are all regular season only since these are regular-season awards.
Other notes: A team with a winning record is a team that finishes the season with a winning record, not a Week 4 game against a 2-1 team that finishes 4-12. Any reference to ANY/A is adjusted net yards per (pass) attempt, which accounts for sacks, touchdown passes, and interceptions.
MVP Splits vs. Playoff-Bound and Winning Teams
First, here is a table of splits for the last 30 MVP-winning quarterbacks in games against non-playoff teams compared to games against playoff teams, and it also has games against non-winning teams and games against winning teams:
| Opp. Split | Non-PO Tm | PO Tm | Non-Win Tm | Win Tm |
| Games | 308 | 165 | 278 | 195 |
| Games/Yr | 10.3 | 5.5 | 9.3 | 6.5 |
| Record | 266-42 (.864) | 119-46 (.721) | 245-33 (.881) | 140-55 (.718) |
| Avg PF | 30.8 | 28.3 | 31.2 | 27.8 |
| Avg PA | 18.3 | 22.3 | 18.2 | 21.7 |
| Comp. % | 66.8% | 64.9% | 67.1% | 64.8% |
| Pass YPG | 267.2 | 272.2 | 268.1 | 270.0 |
| Pass YPA | 8.25 | 8.08 | 8.30 | 8.03 |
| TD:INT Ratio | 3.75 | 3.32 | 3.81 | 3.28 |
| TD% | 7.29% | 6.38% | 7.51% | 6.21% |
| INT% | 1.94% | 1.92% | 1.97% | 1.89% |
| Sack% | 4.80% | 5.43% | 4.73% | 5.43% |
| Passer Rating | 108.3 | 103.1 | 109.4 | 102.4 |
| ANY/A | 8.10 | 7.68 | 8.19 | 7.62 |
As you might expect, passing efficiency dips a little against better teams with passer rating down 5-to-7 points, ANY/A down 0.4-to-0.5, completion percentage down a couple of points, a lower touchdown pass rate, and a higher sack rate. But passing yards per game remain very consistent and even interception rate is surprisingly about the same.
Number of Big Games Show the 1999 Rams Were Just Different
The first takeaway is that there’s almost a 2-to-1 ratio of games against non-playoff teams to games against playoff teams, which makes sense. Only 12 or 14 teams make the playoffs each year, so these quarterbacks faced an average of 5.5 playoff opponents per season. You’ll face more teams who have winning records but don’t necessarily make the playoffs, so there’s an average of 6.5 of those games per season. With 14 playoff teams and a 17-game schedule, we are likely to see more MVP seasons where a quarterback plays a higher number of games against playoff teams.
In our sample, only three MVP quarterbacks played the highest total of eight games against playoff teams: Brett Favre (1997 Packers), Patrick Mahomes (2022 Chiefs), and Lamar Jackson (2023 Ravens). The last two had a 6-2 record while Favre’s team was 7-1 against playoff teams. The aforementioned Kurt Warner in 1999 is the only MVP quarterback since 1988 to play just two games against playoff teams, he also lost both games, and one of them was against an 8-8 Detroit team that came back in the final seconds against Warner’s defense. So, that’s just one game against a team with a winning record before they had to play three such games in the postseason on their way to a ring.
But Warner’s story and stats were so strong in 1999 that voters weren’t going to hold a 24-21 loss to the Titans where his kicker missed a 38-yard field goal in the final seconds against him. Warner also got his revenge in the Super Bowl against those Titans in a 23-16 win. He received 33 MVP votes that year in an easy win of the award.
The 2023 Lamar Jackson MVP Argument You Probably Didn’t Hear
An argument you really didn’t hear for Lamar Jackson in 2023 that should have been presented more is that he played in 13 games against winning teams, five more than any other MVP-winning quarterback since 1988.
That’s thanks to the AFC North becoming the first NFL division since 1935 to have all four teams with a winning record. Jackson was 10-3 against those teams with good numbers. His 7.76 ANY/A ranks 11th out of 30 in this split, and none of the quarterbacks ranked ahead of him played more than seven winning teams in their MVP season. Someone like Aaron Rodgers (2011 Packers) only played four such games.
It’s unclear how many winning teams the Ravens will face in 2024 when it’s all said and done. It could be nine, 10, or it could be 12 if the Bengals (4-7) manage to rally.
Winning Rates and the 2003 MVP Tie in the AFC South
Naturally, it is harder to win games against playoff teams, and you can see the winning percentage is a little over 14 points higher against non-playoff teams at 86.4%. But they still beat playoff teams at a 72.1% rate in these MVP seasons. But you can see that scoring drops 2.5 points and points allowed goes up a full 4.0 points on average in games against playoff teams. Just the nature of playing better opponents.
The only MVP quarterbacks to go undefeated against non-playoff teams were Tom Brady (2007 Patriots were 10-0), Peyton Manning (2013 Broncos were 9-0), and Patrick Mahomes (2018 Chiefs were 10-0), a fitting list.
The only MVP quarterback to have a winning percentage under 70% against non-playoff teams was Rich Gannon, who was 8-4 (.667) on the 2002 Raiders. However, Gannon’s team was 3-1 (.750) against playoff teams that year, so his record got better in big games.
Only 7-of-30 quarterbacks had a higher winning percentage in games against playoff teams. The largest increase was Aaron Rodgers as the 2021 Packers were 8-3 (.727) against non-playoff teams and 5-0 against playoff teams.
There are only four seasons where the quarterback had a losing record against playoff teams. We already covered Warner going 0-2 on the 1999 Rams. Something very interesting happened in 2003 when Peyton Manning and Steve McNair were co-MVPs in the AFC South despite Manning’s Colts sweeping McNair’s Titans, who were also 2-0 in games McNair missed due to injury. But McNair was only 1-3 against playoff teams that year while Manning was 2-3, and that didn’t matter to voters.
But Manning still had a strong argument when you consider the nature of how he lost two games to the Super Bowl teams that year, Carolina and New England. Against the Panthers, Manning led a 91-yard touchdown drive to force overtime, then never touched the ball again in a 23-20 overtime loss back when a field goal on the first drive ended the game. Then against the Patriots, Manning threw four touchdowns in a 21-point rally against the No. 1 defense, but his goal-line offense was stuffed at the 1-yard line on fourth down in a 38-34 loss that truly kickstarted the Manning-Brady rivalry.
To this day, I cannot really explain why Manning and McNair both received 16 votes to tie for MVP when just about everything favored Manning that year, including both head-to-head meetings.
Remembering How Crazy Patrick Mahomes Was in 2018
While we contemplate if the 2024 Chiefs have the scoring chops to three-peat, let’s not forget how insane Patrick Mahomes was in his first season as a starter in 2018 when he threw 50 touchdowns and won MVP.
Despite the fact that the Chiefs were 3-4 in games against winning teams that year, Mahomes still led the Chiefs to an average of 36.7 points per game. The problem was the Chiefs allowed 36.1 points in those games, a full touchdown more than the other 29 seasons in our sample. That’s why the Chiefs fired defensive coordinator Bob Sutton and replaced him with Steve Spagnuolo in 2019, a dynasty-creating move or else Mahomes might have been stuck in wild shootouts for years to come.
The 2018 Chiefs allowed just 18.7 points per game to non-winning teams, but that average shot up to 36.1 against winning teams. That rise of 17.5 points is a full 8.0 points higher than any other quarterback in this study.
But Mahomes’ numbers were so absurd in those seven games (118.6 passer rating and 9.07 ANY/A – both better than his 109.8 rating and 8.73 ANY/A against non-winning teams) that no one was going to deny him the MVP that year. He received 41 MVP votes to nine for Drew Brees.
But that 2018 season is a great example of how a quarterback like Mahomes can lose most of his prime-time games to top teams like the Patriots (43-40; never got the ball back after tying it), Rams (54-51; only game in NFL history where losing team broke 50 points), Chargers (29-28; defense blew late 14-point lead), and Seahawks (38-31) and still win MVP with ease.
For what it’s worth, no one here has won MVP while putting up below-average numbers in games against winning teams. You can get away with a subpar record, but the numbers better still be there in some capacity if you’re going to win this award.
What About Big Games Late in the Season?
As we said before, big games can be aided by hindsight. But when it gets to December and around Week 15, it becomes a lot clearer when a game is big if it has major playoff implications. We have seen some games like this in past seasons decide MVP races.
1996: The Packers (Brett Favre) and Broncos (John Elway) were among the best teams that season, and they met in Week 15. However, Elway missed the game due to injury, and Favre shined with four touchdown passes in a 41-6 rout. That likely swung the MVP in his favor that year as he received 52 votes to 33.5 for Elway and 5.5 to Terrell Davis, the Denver running back.
2004: Even though it was fairly obvious that Peyton Manning was going to win MVP in the season he broke numerous passing records, he still did it in style in Week 16 in a comeback win against the Chargers that clinched the No. 3 seed for the Colts. Manning threw his record-setting 49th touchdown pass to force overtime where the Colts won the game. He was able to rest after a drive in Week 17 with the MVP locked up.
2009: Peyton Manning (Colts) and Drew Brees (Saints) had their teams at 13-0 and on a collision course for the Super Bowl. But in Week 15, Manning led a record-setting seventh fourth-quarter comeback win on Thursday Night Football in Jacksonville to get to 14-0. Two nights later against Dallas, Brees fumbled at the end of a 24-17 loss, and the MVP was basically decided that night with Manning getting his fourth award.
2017: While it was known best for the Jesse James touchdown getting overturned, New England’s 27-24 win in Pittsburgh in Week 15 for the No. 1 seed helped solidify a third MVP for Tom Brady, who may have lost it to Ben Roethlisberger had that touchdown stood. This was also a season where Carson Wentz (Eagles) tore his ACL in Week 14 in a big win against the Rams, or else he might have won the award that year, a season without a clear choice.
2021: Tom Brady was leading the MVP race, but in Week 15, he was facing the Saints on Sunday Night Football and that defense had his number. Brady lost 9-0 at home in a game where Chris Godwin tore his ACL, and that shutout paved the way for Aaron Rodgers to leapfrog him for his fourth MVP award.
2023: On Christmas night in Week 16, the 49ers hosted the Ravens in a battle of No. 1 seeds on Monday Night Football. Brock Purdy was the MVP favorite, but Lamar Jackson was right there. Purdy ended up throwing four interceptions while Jackson had a good game, and that turned the race his way. He finished it off the following week when he threw five touchdowns against Miami.
The fact is of these 30 MVP seasons, only one quarterback lost a game in Week 15 or later to a team that won more than 10 games that season. That was Mahomes in 2018 on a Thursday night against the Chargers to start Week 15. But in that game, the Chiefs led 28-14 late before the Chargers won 29-28 on a two-point conversion in the final seconds. Mahomes never had a chance with the ball and a deficit.
But had Mahomes threw a 4-pick parade that night the way Purdy did against the Ravens last year on Christmas? Then maybe someone like Drew Brees (or Philip Rivers) could have challenged him better for the MVP that year.
It’s funny how Week 15 keeps coming up, because that could be the week this year with the most pivotal game left for the MVP when Josh Allen’s Bills are in Detroit against Jared Goff’s Lions. It’s not going to be a prime-time game, but it should be a 4:25 ET start on FOX for most of the nation to see. That stuff matters, more than ever too.
The Big Game Resumes of MVP Candidates in 2024
Finally, let’s look at the updated MVP cases with the added context of big games for this year’s top candidates. We obviously don’t know every winning team and playoff team they have or haven’t played yet, but we can make educated guesses.
Josh Allen (+125 at FanDuel) – Buffalo Bills
The Bills have already played all of their most pivotal AFC games, and they lost in Baltimore and Houston in Weeks 4-5 with very underwhelming performances from Allen, including a 10-point effort against a suspect Baltimore defense and that game in Houston where he was 9-for-30 passing. But does knocking off the Chiefs in Week 11 outweigh those two losses for MVP voters? Maybe so. We know this moment with the game-clinching touchdown run on 4th-and-2 will resonate well into the playoffs.
But let’s say Allen has a mediocre (read: nothing special) game in a win in Week 13 when the Bills return to Sunday Night Football to take on the 49ers. Then let’s predict he gets smoked in Detroit in Week 15 similar to the 35-10 loss in Baltimore. At that point, Allen may no longer have the Bills in contention for the No. 1 seed, he probably won’t have the best stats in any category, and no one’s likely to care what he does against bad AFC East teams (Patriots twice and Jets) in the final three games.
This MVP race has a chance to turn the 2023 debate on its head when Lamar Jackson received 49 of the 50 first-place votes with the lone objection going to Allen in Buffalo. But the argument in 2023 was that Jackson had the most team wins and “good enough” stats on a No. 1 seed, and that mattered more than Allen having 15 more touchdowns than Jackson (44 vs. 29) while not having the No. 1 defense that helped Jackson.
But what happens in 2024 if Allen’s stats are just good enough, but he doesn’t have the No. 1 seed in part because of those losses to Baltimore and Houston, and then what if Jackson has huge stats on an 11-6 wild card team with an underperforming defense?
Does the 2023 standard of most wins still apply, or are we changing course? Right now, Allen’s stats are simply not good enough to win on that alone. He’ll need a No. 1 seed or a big performance in Detroit or something to put the bow on top of this year.
But absolutely circle the Detroit game in Week 15 as possibly making or breaking Allen’s MVP case in the end.
Lamar Jackson (+200 at FanDuel) – Baltimore Ravens
Meanwhile, Jackson has an opportunity to shine against the Chargers and Eagles the next two weeks before his bye week. Then he’ll be in front of national audiences in Weeks 16-17 when he takes on the Steelers in a rematch at home, then he’s in Houston on Christmas Day. Winning the division in impressive fashion is still on the table, and Baltimore’s defense is nothing like it was in 2023, so he’ll have that argument in his favor this time.
But the question is can he get it done? We know he owns NFC teams, but the Eagles can at least score, and the Chargers held him down to low numbers in last year’s game. Now they have Jim Harbaugh changing the culture and playing better defense, so it’s quite possible the Ravens pick up a fifth loss in one of the next two games.
Then there’s a rematch with the Steelers, a team Jackson has lost his last four starts to, and the Ravens are 1-8 against Pittsburgh since 2020. With that game in the late Saturday afternoon window in Week 16, that could break his campaign if it goes like Sunday just did. MVP awards also rarely go to quarterbacks on wild card teams.
Jackson is a bit stuck here as he lost to the Chiefs in Week 1, and he lost in Pittsburgh again. He has the Buffalo win on his resume, but the fact is Derrick Henry was the MVP that night with Lamar and Allen on the field. That doesn’t really help his case, or at least it shouldn’t in theory.
That’s why he’s going to have to clean up with three island games left against good teams. If Allen falters in Detroit in Week 15, that perfectly sets up Jackson to take his third MVP if he can beat the Steelers and Texans in back-to-back national games. That’s assuming he doesn’t implode in the Harbaugh Bowl and get outshined by Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley coming up first.
It’s definitely a tougher schedule for the Ravens than the Bills this year. That should count for something.
Jared Goff (+800 at FanDuel) – Detroit Lions
I am fundamentally against the idea of Jared Goff for MVP in 2024, because that Detroit offense is so well designed and coached, the offensive line is stellar, the running backs are an excellent duo, and Amon-Ra St. Brown is a beast. Goff had a game against Tennessee where the Lions scored 52 points while he contributed 52 net passing yards. He also got away with five interceptions in Houston, the type of road win no team has pulled off since Tony Romo and the Cowboys in 2007.
A lot of quarterbacks would do great in Goff’s situation, and in some of the few times they truly relied on him this year, he deferred almost 100% to the running game in overtime to beat the Rams in Week 1,and he could not pierce the end zone despite numerous opportunities in a 20-16 loss to Tampa Bay.
But we have to face some facts too. Goff is a former No. 1 overall pick who has already led a 500-point team to a 13-3 record and Super Bowl appearance with the 2018 Rams. He’s been productive in Detroit for three seasons now, so he is not a one-year wonder like some Brian Sipe winning MVP for the 1980 Browns type of situation.
Goff has been very hot ever since the Seattle game where he completed 100% of his passes, the first quarterback to ever do that on 18 attempts. But if we’re going to get past the stigma and believe Goff can win MVP, it’ll have to include a great performance in a win over the Bills in Week 15, which isn’t unreasonable with the way this offense is humming. Goff could end up setting the single-season record for completion percentage too while leading the league in passing success rate and yards per attempt.
Not to mention the Lions have a real shot to go 15-2 or 16-1, which would be quite impressive when you look at the strength of their division with teams like the Vikings (8-2) and Packers (7-3) at a combined 15-5 record. But it is a fact that the Lions have not defeated many teams who were expected to be good and had confidence they were good when they played Detroit. That’s why beating teams coming up like Buffalo and sweeps of Green Bay and Minnesota will be crucial to Goff’s candidacy.
He could even pull a 2023 Lamar and clinch it in Week 17 on a Monday night in San Francisco in the NFC Championship Game rematch. Remember, Goff didn’t blow that title game. Josh Reynolds’ drops, a fumble in the backfield, bad defense, and an unreliable kicking situation lost that game for Detroit.
We could be right there at a Goff MVP in six weeks if all of these things happen. These remaining games should sort out this MVP race, but don’t be surprised if people who made their case for a certain quarterback last year are arguing the complete opposite for the same quarterback this year.
But Week 15 between the Bills and Lions is the next major domino to fall in this MVP race. It could even be a Super Bowl preview too, which is still the main prize this season in case anyone forgot.
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