Preseason Award Picks Part I

Bryan Knowles: We’ve made it!  Welcome friends old and new to the FTN DVOA preseason award picks, the last in our offseason series of previews and predictions. Once again, we have gone through the NFL’s list of end-of-season awards, carefully pieced through all of our DVOA projections and data, used our years of experience to account for all possible variables, and have come up with unique, irreplaceable insights like “this Patrick Mahomes kid is pretty good.”  You can’t get that sort of analysis just anywhere, folks.

Cale Clinton: To our credit, Bryan and I fared pretty well running this exercise for FTN this time last year. We eventually landed on MVP Lamar Jackson, Offensive Player of the Year Christian McCaffrey, and Defensive Rookie of the Year Will Anderson Jr. We even missed out on First Coach to Permanently Leave Position by a hair, rolling with Brandon Staley over the eventual first relieved Josh McDaniels. Of course, this isn’t exactly a perfect science. Neither of us saw the inevitable Houston Texans breakout coming, nor did we see a late-season Joe Flacco run from the Browns completely overhauling three different awards categories. We both technically figured the Chiefs could end up back in the Super Bowl, we just got too cute. 

Bryan: For each award, we are picking a favorite – the person we think is most likely to win, regardless of their betting odds. But after that, we’re also listing players we think are good values for their current odds, as well as some long shots for the truly degenerate among us. And while all of the odds we’ve listed are correct as of time of writing, remember that these odds vary rapidly, especially as we approach the regular season.  You can use FTN’s Prop Shop to quickly find the latest and best odds in your state, quickly comparing odds from the sportsbooks legal in your state to find the best odds. Maybe you think Josh Allen is most likely to win MVP – in which case, you’d rather have him at +900 than +800. The Prop Shop will help you get every last scrap of value on your picks.

Enough prelude and procedure, however – let’s get right into the award picks, starting at the very top.

Most Valuable Player

Highest Odds

• Patrick Mahomes, KC (+475)
• C.J. Stroud, HOU (+800)
• Josh Allen, BUF (+900)
• Joe Burrow, CIN (+950)
• Jalen Hurts, PHI (+1200)
• Jordan Love, GB (+1400)
• Aaron Rodgers, NYJ (+1800)
• Jared Goff, DET (+2000)
• Dak Prescott, DAL (+2000)
• Lamar Jackson, BAL (+2000)
• Brock Purdy, SF (+2000)

The Favorite

Bryan: There is only one Most Valuable Player in the NFL.  Last year, Lamar Jackson won the award for most valuable player. Josh Allen maybe should have won the award for most valuable player. Brock Purdy was statistically the most valuable player.  But Patrick Mahomes (+475) is the Most Valuable Player, all capital letters included.

Mahomes has reached the point where he is simply the default answer every season. He can be outplayed in any given year – and was last season, as his lack of receiving talent limited what he could do for a huge chunk of games. But until someone does outperform him, he starts as your favorite and we can move along from there.  Gotta beat the King to become the King, after all.

Cale: Obviously, no quarterback in the league is better than Mahomes. This is now pretty much exclusively a quarterback award as well. It’s nice betting markets have dropped the preseason charade of placing a frisky Christian McCaffrey, Derrick Henry, or Tyreek Hill in these odds anymore. That being said, Mahomes is already at the LeBron James-esqe peak where he is going to be MVP every season. The Chiefs spent all offseason building out the receiving corps, and his division is as bad as it’s probably ever been in the Mahomes era. 

I would posit that the field is the favorite for MVP at the moment. The Most Valuable Player award is very narrative driven, meaning the best case often has the best story attached to this. How’s this for a story, then? Josh Allen (+900) has 241 combined targets vacated with the departures of Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis. The Bills play the hardest schedule in the league by DVOA, play in one of the league’s toughest divisions, and have five different opportunities to play in front of a national audience. If Allen is expected to play at the same level he has in these past years – against better competition with worse weapons, no less – this is his award to lose. Everyone else on this list inside of +1500 is either too young (Stroud, Love) or has too much help (Burrow, Hurts, Stroud again). Hurts’ tush-push season also could have won him the award last year were it not for the team’s end-of-season collapse. 

The Field

Bryan: Could someone please explain to me why there are seven names with shorter odds than last year’s MVP? Lamar Jackson (+2000) is in a ridiculous position – the odds make it seem like he was a fluke winner a season ago! I assume that the betters are assuming that the voters wouldn’t want to give the award to the same player twice in a row. I suppose that’s true, it hasn’t happened since the ancient history of 2020 and 2021, when Aaron Rodgers picked up his back-to-back nods.  Peyton Manning pulled it off in 2008-09 and 2003-04, Brett Favre did it in 1995-96, Joe Montana did it in 1989-90 … it doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen.  The champion does often see his vote total go down in the second year – Rodgers fell from 44 votes to 39 between his two titles. But with Jackson starting out with 49 first-place votes gives him more than a little room to come back to the pack, you know?  At the very least, having him below players like Jalen Hurts and Jordan Love seems ridiculous on the face of it. He’s the best value bet on the board.

Cale: Yeah, Jackson this low is honestly just disrespectful. The rest of his division has gotten better, and the in-house talent around him has taken a slight step back. If anything, the onus is on him to do even more this year. I can picture the posts from social media accounts Monday after Week 12 – fresh off a road trip against a weak Chargers defense, no less – throwing eyeball emojis around over Jackson out-pacing his MVP season. Another year under Todd Monken, another year in the league for Zay Flowers, and a rediscovery of Isaiah Likely means that this team’s passing offense has the chance to be sharper and more efficient than it was last year. 

Bryan: As for a longshot?  Mike Sando’s annual poll of NFL decision makers had 14 quarterbacks in Tier 1 or Tier 2 – quarterbacks who can, at least on occasion, carry their team by themselves.  Of those 14, three of them have odds below Jackson, making them at least somewhat intriguing longshot picks for MVP – what if those “on occasion” moments become the majority of their game?  One of those three is Justin Herbert, but I don’t see the Chargers going anywhere this year and you need at least a little team success to win the award. Another is Kirk Cousins, and while I know he represents an improvement in Atlanta, I don’t see double-digit wins from the Falcons in the best case scenario, and you’d need something special to convince the voters to say that Kirk Cousins was the best player in football.  So no, I’ll ride with Matthew Stafford (+3000) and the Rams. If Los Angeles can take the NFC West from an on-paper loaded San Francisco – and do it after Aaron Donald has retired, no less! – that will cause people to sit up and take notice. If Stafford can take an offensively-led Rams team there, limiting his interceptions some and putting up numbers close to his 2021 season (4886 yards, 41 TDs) … I mean, it’s a longshot, but it’s not unreasonable.

Cale: Of all the awards, this is the one Vegas seems the sharpest on. Realistic options stop around +2000, and no one outside of +3500 odds even really has a case. The lognest odds on the board with an inkling of a chance of doing it is Christian McCaffrey, whose odds are as high as +6000. The question is, how much would CMC have to top last year’s performance – 2,023 all-purpose yards and 21 combined rushing and receiving touchdonws – to win MVP?

McCaffrey’s coming off a season with 91.2 rushing yards per game, second in the league to Kyren Williams. Now, no one is touching the ludicrous rushing marks set by O.J. Simpson in 1973 (143.1), but there are some modern parallels. Adrian Peterson rushed for 131.1 yards per game in his MVP season, while the highest mark of the last 10 years was set by Derrick Henry in 2020 with 126.7. McCaffrey probably can’t get close to those, but neither Peterson nor Henry had McCaffrey’s receiving acumen. Peterson finished his MVP campaign with 2,314 yards from scrimmage, good for 144.6 total yards per game, just ahead of McCaffrey’s 126.5 from last year. McCaffrey actually owns the third-best performance for yards from scrimmage, posting 2,392 total yards in 2019. That season, he posted 86.7 rushing yards per game and an additional 62.8 receiving yards per game. Now, McCaffrey’s only been able to break 50 receiving yards per game once, so let’s say he posts his career average of 47.5 (whihc is markedly better than his average with the 49ers). Up his rushing total to 100 yards per game, and that barely puts us over Peterson on a per game basis. In addition to all that, we have to consider scoring. McCaffrey’s 2023 season total of 21 combined touchdowns tied Raheem Mostert for the league lead and ranked tied for ninth-most by a running back since the merger. Four backs since 2000 have posted higher totals than that – 2006 MVP LaDainian Tomlinson (31), 2005 MVP Shaun Alexander (28), 2000 MVP Marshall Faulk (26), and 2002 Not-MVP-But-Just-Scored-A-Lot Priest Holmes (24). Scoring matters slightly more to the yardage total, because all three MVPs mentioned finished with much more reasonable per-game rushing totals than Peterson’s 2012 campaign (117.5 for Alexander, 113.4 for Tomlinson, and just 97.1 for Faulk). McCaffrey’s 2023 season set his career high for receiving touchdowns (7) and ended one shy of his single-season rushing total (15). If McCaffrey can match his single-season record for rushing touchdowns and tie the modem receiving touchdown benchmark set by 2001 Marshall Faulk and 2002 Jerick McKinnon at 9, we get Holmes’ 24. 

So, we have a 100 yard-per-game rusher flirting with 150 yards from scrimmage per game, all while hitting dual-threat scoring totals that either tie career-best marks or tie decades-old scoring thresholds. 2,360 total yards from scrimmage (if San Francisco sits McCaffrey Week 18) and 24 total touchdowns, all while only getting just north of 20 touches per game on average. 

We’re never getting a non-QB to win MVP ever again. If we do, we will need to see this level of production. 

Coach of the Year

Highest Odds

• Matt Eberflus, CHI (+850)
• Jim Harbaugh, LAC (+850)
• Mike Macdonald, SEA (+1000)
• Matt LaFleur, GB (+1200)
• Raheem Morris, ATL (+1300)
• Demeco Ryans, HOU (+1400)
• Shane Steichen, IND (+1500)
• Robert Saleh, NYJ (+1600)
• Jonathan Gannon, ARI (+1700)
• Dave Canales, CAR (+2000)
• Sean Payton, DEN (+2000)
• Kevin O’Connell, MIN (+2000)
• Dan Quinn, WAS (+2000)
• Brian Callahan, TEN (+2000)

The Favorite

Bryan: The first cut is easy – cross out anyone you don’t think will lead a winning team in 2024.  This award hasn’t gone to the coach of a losing team since Jimmy Johnson in 1990, and the only coach to win it since then with fewer than double-digit wins was Brian Daboll at 9-7-1 in 2022.  Yes, if Dave Canales or Dan Quinn manage to produce double-digit win seasons in their first year in their new jobs, they’re probably Coach of the Year. I don’t think that’s going to happen, however.

The voters also like rewarding coaches who turn things around in their first year in the job, but I don’t think any of the seven first-year head coaches will pull that feat off this year.  Mike Macdonald is perhaps the most tempting, but I fear that his defense will take a little too long to gel to have success this season.  So instead, I’m drawn to Matt LaFleur (+1200).  There is a problem with his candidacy, too – usually, the winner ends up coming from a team that improves significantly, and Green Bay was already 9-8 last year.  But taking a step from borderline wild-card team to Super Bowl contender would qualify as a leap in my mind.  And LaFleur doing it with what’s still a very young offense, shuffling around his four borderline no. 1 receivers, would be the sort of showy icing on the cake that might attract voters.  If this is a situation where the Packers have a different leading receiver almost every week, the Packers go 13-4 and win the NFC North? I can see the voters rewarding that with some hardware.

Cale: Frankly, I went into this exercise thinking this award is Jim Harbaugh’s to lose. I also take my buddy Bryan’s advice when he rattles off historical precedent. If winning is the prerequisite for Coach of the Year, then I can’t pick Harbaugh because I am not very high on the Chargers this year. When it comes to Coach of the Year, finding the balance of talent, performance, and timing is massive. Matt Eberflus feels like he’s been there too long and had too many offseason additions to justify a Coach of the Year nod. (Ryan Poles Executive of the Year, though? That I could see.) I agree with Bryan’s comments about Macdonald’s defense coming on too late, but I disagree on the LaFleur pick. I just can’t imagine LaFleur’s Packers making that big of a leap to justify the award. They already had the sixth-best offense of 2023 – a late Joe Flacco run in Cleveland likely pried the Coach of the Year award away from LaFleur then. 

Me? I’m going with Raheem Morris (+1300). The NFC South is the dregs of the league. The Atlanta Falcons spent three straight top-ten picks on skill position talent. Arthur Smith did diddly squat with it. Now, with Kirk Cousins in town and a fresh face on the coaching staff, the Falcons can really make a run. I don’t think it would take much effort for Atlanta to hit double-digit wins. The late-offseason additions Atlanta made to their defense actually put them in a pretty interesting spot. I think there is much better competition elsewhere in the league, but the Atlanta Falcons have been playing with training weights on because of their quarterback and coaching situation. Bringing even league-average quarterback play to the Falcons completely changes this team. It makes Drake London and Kyle Pitts actually look competent. Being able to pass makes things easier for Bijan Robinson. Scoring points means teams actually have to throw against A.J. Terrell and Jessie Bates. All that freedom allows for Morris to potentially get more creative as an offensive play-caller, taking things to the next level. The Falcons are a solid team, but the lack of skill and the rest of the division could really inflate the resume to help Morris. 

The Field

Bryan: I rather like Mike McDaniel (+3000).  If we’re looking for a team with significant improvement, what we’d be saying here is the Dolphins going from 11-6 to top seed in the AFC – not enough to just win the division, but to win big games, late in the year, and take the road to the Super Bowl through Miami.  Starting in late November, the Dolphins have games against the Packers, Jets, Texans, 49ers, Browns and Jets to close out the year.  If they get through that gauntlet at 4-2 or 5-1, and are sitting with 14+ wins?  Well, I don’t think it would be because of the defense.  McDaniel is already acknowledged as having one of the most dynamic offenses in the league; the question is whether it can work late in the season and in the cold.  Wins in Cleveland and New Jersey to end the year would be an emphatic closing statement!

And if you want a longshot, slide alllll the way down the table. There, you will find Dennis Allen (+6500).  Only the trio of Kevin Stefanski, Mike McCarthy and Todd Bowles have lower odds; Allen’s not on anybody’s radar. And that’s what makes him a good longshot candidate! We’ve been pitching all offseason the idea that the Saints are so boring that they’ve tricked everyone into thinking they are bad, when instead they are just mediocre.  So a Saints NFC South win would surprise people who are all-in on the potential of Atlanta.  And what if we’re underselling it?  What if the Saints ride their easy schedule not just to double-digit wins, but 12 or 13?  Going 5-1 in the division, plus beating up on the lower teams in the AFC West gets you to eight, wins over the two worst teams in the NFC East gets you to 10, and maybe they pull off wins over some wildcardish teams at home – the Eagles? Browns? Rams?  The very fact that no one wants to think about the Saints could make Allen’s unthinkable candidacy something to think about.  I think.

Cale: Coach of the Year is always a bit of a crapshoot. The mix of first-time coaches and seasoned veterans makes constructing a legitimate narrative difficult. Since I took first-time head coach Morris already, let’s go with a veteran this time around. Robert Saleh (+1600) deserves some sort of lifetime achievement award for what he’s done to the Jets defense. Saleh’s first year with the Jets resulted in the worst defensive DVOA in the franchise’s history since at least 1981 (16.8%). The next two seasons, New York finished with the eighth-best (-9.5% in 2022) and third-best (-14.2% in 2023) defensive DVOAs of the DVOA era. That is an unprecedented turnaround, and a shockingly steady one at that. The one thing New York has missed is even league-average quarterback play. The Jets have had two seasons with a positive offensive passing DVOA in the last two decades (2006 Chad Pennington and 2015 Ryan Fitzpatrick). If Aaron Rodgers can even play at a fraction of his MVP level, he’s arguably the best Jets quarterback of the 21st century. Saleh riding out years of woe, leading the best Jets defense since the New York Sack Exchange, and breaking the longest active playoff drought in professional sports would be a pretty easy Coach of the Year case to make. Managing Rodgers’ personality would earn him som brownie points, too. 

I will also lean McDaniel, but I think he is much more of a longshot than you do, Bryan. The McDaniel offense enters its third year of the league. The first year took the league by storm and was some Tua Tagovailoa concussion problems away from taking the league by storm. Its second iteration introduced cheat motion, an innovation so busted that is already close to getting patched out via rule changes and officiating call tendencies. The offense itself is a known commodity to a certain extent. We know McDaniel and Tyreek Hill carry Tagovailoa. We also know McDaniel can innovate brand-new offensive tendencies that get copied by the rest of the league within the year. Is breaking the late-season bug enough for McDaniel to lock up Coach of the Year? Or does he need a new innovation – a new offensive wrinkle, niche tendency, or schematic change – to actually lock up the award? I’m not saying he’s a Belichick/Reid-type who could just win this award every year, but there aren’t many head coaches winning this award by doing pretty much the same thing for a third season in a row. I think anyone who wins this rock fight in the AFC East deserves a Coach of the Year finalist slot, but McDaniel specifically needs a bit more to bolster his case. 

First Coach to Permanently Leave Position

Highest Odds

• Dennis Allen, NO (+275)
• Brian Daboll, NYG (+500)
• Mike McCarthy, DAL (+750)
• Todd Bowles, TB (+800)
• Robert Saleh, NYJ (+1000)
• Nick Sirianni, PHI (+1000)
• Matt Eberflus, CHI (+1200)
• Kevin Stefanski, CLE (+1200)
• Sean McDermott, BUF (+1400)
• Antonio Pierce, LV (+1600)
• Doug Pederson, JAX (+1600)

The Favorite

Bryan: It’s hard not to go Brian Daboll (+500) here, and I’m not going to spend too much time and effort trying.  We’re higher than the field on the Saints, so we’re not high on the odds of him getting kicked out this year.  Mike McCarthy is ludicrously high; the Cowboys bomb out in the playoffs, not the regular season, and so the odds of him being the first coach to be let go is far too high.  Both the Jets and Eagles could have rotten seasons, but could is a very operative term there – and even then, Sirianni I think has more than enough rope to at least last the full season.  Maybe there’s a world where Aaron Rodgers gets Saleh fired early in an angry rant to management, but there are also plenty of worlds in which the Jets are just fine, so betting there seems wrong.

The Giants, though, seem to have very little hope. The reality of a full season with Daniel Jones under center seems to be setting in for Giants fans – a year in which they’ll get a Malik Nabors highlight or two a week to try to sooth the balm of loss after loss after loss.  Giants ownership has shown a willingness to make midseason moves before, firing Ben McAdoo at 2-10 in 2017.  I don’t know if the Giants will be that bad, but I could see them getting fed up after a December switch from Jones to Drew Lock does not ‘provide a spark’, and finally ending the Daboll experiment after two and half years and, say, a 19-26-1 record.

Cale: I, for one, am absolutely shocked at how much representation the NFC East has on here. Is this meant to represent who wants pole position for Belichick in 2025? Last year I joked about Mike McCarthy being on here, but he and Nick Sirianni have way too good of teams to not get a chance to see the season through, even with a prize as tantalizing as Belichick. The coaching market feels surprisingly stable right now for the most part. Teams have done a great job hitting on prospective coaching talent for the most part, and they’ve also done a good job at identifying when to cut bait quickly. You know the market is healthy when last year’s Coach of the Year and the interim coach that won over the locker room so much he earned the full-time role are both top-ten in first-to-be-fired odds. 

I mean I guess I have to say Daboll? I don’t feel good about it. I don’t think Dennis Allen is first out, if only because I think the Saints would rather hover around .500 forever than confront the cap monster and orchestrate a real rebuild. The Giants at least know they stink and know they need to rebuild. The only thing that is going to tank Daboll’s career chances are the vibes around the team. I don’t necessarily think he’s that bad of a coach. His Coach of the Year award was absolutely warranted, turning a bunch of UDFAs and reclamation receivers into top-20 DVOA performers. A third-string quarterback named Tommy Cutlets went 3-3 last year! What more do you want from the man? 

I would say Daboll loses job just because he’s a yeller. He’s a loud disciplinarian, and one report to The Athletic claimed he makes attacks personal. Daboll is a fine coach, just not transcendent. You can get away with being an okay coach on a bad roster. You can get away with being a jerk. A jerk on a bad roster is just going to kill morale. Hell, an early Daboll firing might even benefit the Giants. That way he can’t win with bad talent and kill New York’s chances of replacing Daniel Jones in the draft. 

The Field

Bryan: I know we’re more down on Chicago than the general public, and I would never recommend a team fire their coach the year after drafting a rookie quarterback, as breaking up the quarterback-head coach-general management trifecta is a great way to start yourself down a never-ending conveyor belt of conflicting rebuilding plans. But the pressure is on Matt Eberflus (+1200) to produce right now behind Caleb Williams, DJ Moore, Rome Odunze and Keenan Allen.  But what if that doesn’t happen?  The standard expectation for a rookie quarterback has to be that there will be painful stretches where things don’t work. The average passing DVOA for a qualified rookie quarterback is just -16.1%, after all, and only 18 of the 100 passers put up positive marks. Maybe Williams can be expected to be higher because of his pedigree and the weapons around him, but expecting good production out of him in Year 1 is a dangerous game.  But with the expectations so high, another below-average offensive year might be enough to give Eberflus the axe.  The Bears have never fired someone midseason, but a couple month-long losing streaks where the can’t-miss offense keeps missing and last year’s turnover-happy defense reverts to the mean could mean breaking new ground in Chicago.

For a longshot, I like Kevin O’Connell (+3300), as I think everyone with longer odds than he has is pretty much guaranteed to come back in 2025 as long as they want to.  There’s not a lot of smoke around O’Connell’s seat, either – if anything, Kwsei Adofo-Mensah might be the one to get the axe if things get bad enough in Minnesota to justify making a move.  The idea that this is a lost season already, with Kirk Cousins out and Sam Darnold killing time while J.J. McCarthy recovers might be enough to give O’Connell the cover he needs to survive anything. That being said, the Vikings’ 13-4 playoff run in O’Connell’s first season was exceptionally fluky, and the 7-10 team from a year ago was closer to Minnesota’s ‘deserved’ record in either year.  If things get off to a bad start early – think starting out 0-7, including an ugly loss to the Giants, we might start hearing whispers.  Likely? No.  But maybe more likely than Darnold being a functional starter in the NFL, and we’ve seen bigger falls from grace before.

Cale: I get where you’re coming from on Eberflus, but if he lasted the whole Fields saga then he’s getting one full crack at Caleb Williams. There are a ton of interesting names in the middle of the pack: Sean McDermott, Doug Pederson, and to a lesser extent Sean Payton. Payton’s addition of Nix probably buys him a year and change, but all three of these coaches are relatively seasoned NFL veterans who once had expectations and are now rebuilding at least one side of the ball. Pederson’s defensive coordinator change and the loss of Calvin Ridley are going to make for an interesting season, but I don’t think it’s quite firable yet. I do, however, think there is a good chance McDermott (+1400) doesn’t finish the year if the hard schedule and lack of receiving corps takes a hit. Don’t get me wrong, I also think there’s a chance this team is resilient to the point where Josh Allen has a case for MVP. Just relative to where the Bills are as a franchise – accumulating multiple disappointing playoff losses in a row, letting a ton of signature veteran talent walk, and doing a big reset on offense – there feels like room for a complete regime change if things start out ugly. 

Speaking of AFC contenders carried by one of the five best quarterbacks in the league, I feel like I missed the boat on when the public came around on Zac Taylor (+3300). Bengals fans didn’t like Taylor as a play-caller and decision-maker, and national analysts never held him in the same regard as the other top young head coaches. The Super Bowl run seemingly gave him immunity despite that mostly coming off the backs of an astronomically rare level of young talent. Then it all just … stopped? Was Jake Browning’s three-game win streak and a 9-8 record in a washout season enough to exonerate Taylor? It feels unlikely. The future of the Bengals is bright with Chase and Burrow, but I also don’t think Taylor is the next Andy Reid to Burrow’s Mahomes. This is a partnership that could easily change hands for the better. 

Offensive Player of the Year

Highest Odds

• Tyreek Hill, MIA (+700)
• Christian McCaffrey, SF (+850)
• CeeDee Lamb, DAL (+1000)
• Ja’Marr Chase, CIN (+1200)
• Justin Jefferson, MIN (+1400)
• Breece Hall, NYJ (+1500)
• Bijan Robinson, ATL (+1800)
• Amon-Ra St. Brown, DET (+1800)

The Favorite

Bryan: With no quarterback having shorter odds than +5000 (Anthony Richardson, of all people!), it looks like people are beginning to accept that this is basically the award for best-non-quarterback, and continuing to pretend that offensive linemen do not exist.  That didn’t stop Lamar Jackson from getting three first-place votes, or five other votes from being handed out to Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy and Josh Allen, but we do at least seem to be beyond the era of “Quarterback X is MVP, and Quarterback Y is OPOY”.  Knock on wood.

No one has won this award in back-to-back years since Marshall Faulk did the treble in 1999-2001 for the Greatest Show on Turf. To achieve that, you’d want to have a team that wants to run more than normal, with a running back they’re willing to give tons of snaps and eschew the dreaded committee.  And it wouldn’t be enough for them to just rack up yards on the ground; they’d have to be a threat on passing downs as well – perhaps some sort of matchup nightmare that’s difficult to scheme against. Oh, and it would probably help if their primary backup was lost for the season just before the year started. So yes, pencil me in for another run for Christian McCaffrey (+850).  I stared long and hard at Tyreek Hill – and in a close race, the tie may well go to the guy who didn’t win it last year – but McCaffrey is so far ahead of the other [healthy] running backs in the league that I’ve got to side with him.  We could be in a situation where voters want to put a wideout first, but split their votes between very similar seasons for Hill and CeeDee Lamb and Ja’Marr Chase and so forth. Assuming he stays healthy, McCaffrey has a great chance to at least be the highest running back on every ballot.

Cale: If you read my MVP longshot on McCaffrey and thought I was going anyone else here, you must think I just love looking at niche NFL pace stats for fun. (I do, but that’s beside the point). I laid out a ludicrous, hyper-efficient path for a 28-year-old Christian McCaffrey with 1,800 career touches at the professional level to maybe win MVP as a non-quarterback. I only wrote that because I think he’s the only non-QB capable of actually winning MVP. The closest second non-quarterback in the MVP debate is Tyreek Hill. Tua admitted to the team feeding Hill on the LeBatard Show so that Hill could hit 2,000. He didn’t come close despite setting new career highs for yards per game (11.4) and receptions per game (7.4). McCaffrey is in the perfect combination of talent and scheme to truly set the league on fire. No one is doing it like CMC, and no system is better to feed him than Shanahan’s. Don’t overthink this. 

The Field

Bryan: The long-ish odds on Bijan Robinson (+1800) are quite tempting. Atlanta has made no secret of their desire to get the ball to Robinson early and often, and if CMC is a favorite in the Shanahan system, why not Robinson in Zac Robinson’s offense coming out from Sean McVay and company?  McCaffery has been specifically cited by both Bijan and Zac, with the coordinator specifically mentioning adding more creative ways to give Robinson touches and not just from the backfield. With a more diversified attack and a more competent quarterback calling the shots under center, Robinson could take that next step forward into the very tippy top of the position.

Wide receivers also exist; it’s just that the very best ones are all clustered together without any seeming to be much of a value than any other; it’s very much pick your favorite and hope. But if you want a longer shot, try A.J. Brown (+3000).  From Weeks 3-8 last year, Brown looked like a serious OPOY contender – 831 yards on 49 receptions and five touchdowns with a 44.9% DVOA, best of any wideout with at least 30 targets. I’m not suggesting he’s due for a 140-2,400-14 line or anything like that, but when the Eagles are humming, Brown’s numbers are as good as anyone else in the league.  The only other player to put up 800 receiving yards in a six-game stretch last year was Tyreek Hill, and the last person to top Brown’s 831 was Antonio Brown in 2015.  Brown couldn’t keep that up as the Eagles set themselves on fire over the back half of the season, but the talent and production is clearly there. If the Eagles bounce back to Super Bowl contending status, and Brown can get even in the same ballpark of that great early season stretch for the entire year, he’s got a great shot.

Cale: The Lions need some love in here, and I think I’ll give it to them with an Amon-Ra St. Brown (+1800) OPOY nod. St. Brown went from solid slot receiver to elite slot receiver to one of the best all-around wide receivers in the league at the moment. St. Brown finished seventh in DYAR with a 37.7% DVOA when lined up out wide in 2023, seeing  career high in targets split out wide. That also coincides with his sixth-best DYAR out of the slot. One more year of Ben Johnson in the fold, St. Brown can be maximized to ascend to that OPOY level. 

De’Von Achane (+6000) is extremely interesting to me. It’s a real rock and a hard place. The Dolphins are synonymous with airing it out downfield. Achane, on the other hand, had maybe the most efficient running back season in DVOA history. His 49.1% rushing DVOA was the best by any running back with at least 50 carries. Will Miami get to the ground more to feed Achane the rock? Or is what Miami does offensively facilitate Achane’s rushing ability, and therefore it is necessary to run him less? What is the size of a body of work necessary to earn OPOY?

Defensive Player of the Year

Highest Odds

• T.J. Watt, PIT (+550)
• Micah Parsons, DAL (+550)
• Maxx Crosby, LV (+700)
• Myles Garrett, CLE (+800)
• Nick Bosa, SF (+850)
• Aiden Hutchinson, DET (+1100)

The Favorite

Bryan: Voters love them some sacks. This award has gone to someone in the front seven in 12 of the past 13 seasons.  The actual sack leader has only won the award in five of those 13 years, but it’s still 11 years of players with double-digit sacks – Luke Kuechly (2013) and Stephon Gilmore (2019) being the two exceptions. While it’s certainly not inconceivable someone else could win the award, you can leave the secondary and off-ball linebackers aside and hone in on the pass rushers when you bet here.

I’ll go with Micah Parsons (+550) as my favorite. Parsons keeps coming close, but coming up short – third last season, second the year before, and second as a rookie the year before that.  It feels like he just needs something special to put him over the top – and that’s where 2024 comes into play.  The Cowboys are down pass rushers – no Dorance Armstrong, no Sam Williams, no Dante Fowler. That puts a lot more pressure on Parsons’ shoulders to produce, and means Mike Zimmer might need to find more creative ways to get Parsons in on opposing quarterbacks.  Zimmer’s not much of a blitzer, but he’s creative, so expect to see Parsons moved all over the field to attack offenses, and simulated pressure opening up gaps for him to slip through.

Cale: The back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year award is reserved for the most elite talent. Only three defenders have won the award in consecutive years since 1971: Lawrence Taylor, J.J. Watt, and Aaron Donald. While I think Myles Garrett certainly has the shot to repeat, I think the competition is too still to let him run away with a repeat award. My money is on the other Watt brother, T.J. Watt (+550). Watt has led the league in sacks three of the last four seasons (his torn pectoral kept him out for most of the 2022 season). The only thing holding Watt back from 2023 success is the lack of success from the Steelers

The Field

Bryan: There’s a big gap between the top six and the rest of the field, and I think you can get some value by being willing to slip a little lower off the beaten path. Josh Hines-Allen (+3000) is an intriguing example coming off of a 17.5-sack season.  That didn’t draw any attention – not a single vote of any kind!  So maybe by highlighting him I’m trying to will it into existence, but if the Jaguars are a contending team, the newly be-Hinsed one deserves at least a little recognition.  10.5 sacks will make him the all-time leader in Jaguars history, which seems eminently doable. And now he gets to have Arik Armstead join Travon Walker up front to draw blockers, leaving more room for him to work. While 17.5 sacks might be too much to ask for again, I think he’ll keep that consistency he developed lsat season and have another huge year.

Cale: How about a little sprinkle on Will Anderson (+3000)? Anderson is one of just two holdovers in a Texans front seven that underwent a massive amount of turnover this offseason. That turnover creates a ton of opportunity for the Texans second-year edge rusher to convert his pressures into sacks. Anderson recorded seven sacks in 2023, 5.5 behind the team’s leader Jonathan Greenard. However, he generated just two fewer pressures than Greenard (37 to 39) and recorded six more QB hits than the team’s leading pass rusher (15 to 9). With the new presences of Danielle Hunter, Denico Autry, Dylan Horton, and Azeez Al-Shaair, the Texans’ star young pass rusher could have even more opportunities opened up for him. 

Bryan: As for a long shot, let’s go a little nuts and pick up Brian Burns (+10000).  Burns has been tearing up Giants camp, although that may be in part because he’s practicing against the offense of the New York Giants. Burns did not rack up double-digit sacks last season, but he also didn’t play a single snap in the fourth quarter with a lead, so the environment wasn’t conducive for him. Undeniably talented, maybe a move to New York will give him more passing downs and juice his numbers. What?  It could happen!

Cale: Is one of us obligated to pick a non-edge rusher? If so, let’s keep the Jets defense’s love-fest going with a potential Sauce Gardner (+6000) DPOY campaign. Now, this is a rare, rare occurrence. Six defensive backs since 1990 have won Defensive Player of the Year, and only three of those specifically went to cornerbacks. Sauce has the team pedigree and specific player ability to pull this off, though. All three corners to win – Stephon Gilmore, Charles Woodson, and Deoin Sanders – played for playoff teams with double-digit wins. You have to be an elite ball defender to win DPOY as a corner. While passes defensed was not a stat when Sanders won his award in 1994 Gilmore and Woodson both locked 20 and 18 passes defensed respectively during their DPOY campaigns. Gardner has the passes defensed numbers. He posted 20 passes defensed in his rookie year alone. At present, he just lacks the interception numbers. Gilmore, Woodson, and Sanders all recorded at least six interceptions and two pick sixes during each of their DPOY campaigns. Gardner only has two career interceptions at the professional level and hasn’t seen the end zone since his freshman year at Cincinnati. 

Later today: We pick the best odds on Offensive Rookie of the Year, Defensive Rookie of the Year, Comeback Player of the Year, and Super Bowl Champion.