Jackson vs. Allen Just the Latest MVP Bowl

The NFL had an easy choice when figuring out which divisional round game to get the prime Sunday night slot. The Baltimore Ravens against the Buffalo Bills is fairly clearly the game of the divisional round, featuring two of the top four teams in DVOA. It’s the closest game in our playoff odds, with the Bills winning just 52.3% of the time – we would call it a coin flip, but we know how Bills fans feel about the playoffs and coin flips.

It’s also a matchup between the two presumptive top finishers in the MVP race, with Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen going head-to-head for the second time this season. The two finished first and second in the AP voting for All-Pro quarterback, collecting 48 of the 50 first-place votes, and they are first and second in adjusted DYAR, giving credit to both for their rushing value. During the Bills-Broncos game, Jim Nantz even suggested that that you couldn’t decide which one should be MVP until after next week’s game, which would make tons of sense if a) they hadn’t already played once this season, b) it wasn’t a regular-season award, and c) votes hadn’t already been submitted. Other than that, it’s a perfect plan.

Still, even if the voting is done and the two won’t appear on the field at the same time, it’s still exciting to watch arguably the two best players in football this season go head-to-head with so much on the line. Assuming the MVP voting doesn’t throw us a curveball with, say, Saquon Barkley slipping into the top two, this will be the 13th time since the merger and 14th time since the Super Bowl began that the top two MVP vote-getters have gone head-to-head in the postseason. Can we learn something from the history of these matchups? Some trend, some nugget of truth to help us predict what will happen on Sunday?

No. But it’s fun to look back at them anyway, because good football games are good football games. Let’s take a quick run through of the history of the “MVP Bowl” and see if the eventual award winner typically came out on top, or if the runners-up got the last laugh.

2022: Super Bowl LVII: Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles
Patrick Mahomes vs. Jalen Hurts

The Players: Mahomes pulled off the near-sweep with 48 of 50 first-place votes in a year where he set the NFL record for total yards by a quarterback (passing and rushing) with 5,608. His 1,752 passing DYAR was not quite as historic, and his 26.5% DVOA only ranked third, but he still had a comfortable lead over the rest of the field. Hurts drew one of the remaining two first-place votes and a decent chunk of second- and third-place votes, leading the Eagles to a 13-1 record when healthy and clinching the top seed in the NFC. His passing numbers weren’t anything to write home about (10th with 703 DYAR), but his mobility really was the engine that made the Eagles’ top-ranked rushing offense go. Philly losing both games Hurts missed and looking quite bad while doing so didn’t hurt, either.

The Game: Hurts had the volume, throwing for 304 yards and a touchdown and scoring three more times on the ground – he tied the Super Bowl record for points scored with 20. But his advanced stats are hurt significantly by his second-quarter fumble, which Nick Bolton returned for a score. Mahomes was his usual otherworldly efficient self: 21-for-27 for 182 yards and three touchdowns, plus 44 more yards on the ground. His 194 DYAR is the tenth-most in Super Bowl history. Mahomes drove the Chiefs into range for the game winning field goal, with the help of a ticky-tack but legit pass interference call late, and Kansas City won, 38-35. MVPs 1, Runners-Up 0