Should You Bet on a Non-Quarterback for Super Bowl MVP?

The regular season MVP award has become an effective best quarterback award, and that realization has infected the public attitude toward the Super Bowl MVP award, as well. For many, it is inconceivable that the Chiefs would win and Patrick Mahomes would fail to secure his third Super Bowl MVP trophy. So why bet an even-money Chiefs moneyline when you can bet Mahomes +140 for Super Bowl MVP?

But the Super Bowl is a single game, and that subjects it to increased variance relative to an entire season. Mahomes is the No. 1 driver of the Chiefs’ success, and he is an easy bet to show that over 1,000 offensive plays. But over just 60 plays? Sometimes those include a bad decision or two or a pass the bounces off a receiver and becomes an interception. It’s the reason the Chiefs lost to inferior Broncos and Raiders teams in 2023. It’s the reason five non-quarterbacks have won a Super Bowl MVP since 2008 when just one-non quarterback has won a regular season MVP. And it’s the reason you can find plus-EV non-quarterback Super Bowl MVP bets again this year.

To find those plus-EV bets, you need to predict both ranges of player performance outcomes and MVP voter tendencies. And I have modeled both with a familiar framework for FTN readers: fantasy football. The regular season MVP discourse has evolved past counting passing yard and touchdown totals. But sophisticated metrics like DVOA still correlate with those more basic statistics. And when Super Bowl MVP voters have to decide in-game who should win the award — when most advanced metrics are yet to be calculated — their choices seem to follow the standards we have subconsciously accepted in the prevalence of the most popular fantasy football formats. It isn’t quite a standard half-PPR system. But a fantasy scoring format with bonuses for better completion rates, wide receiver and tight end catches, big round totals of passing and receiving yards, and drive-stealing and scoring defensive plays correctly identifies every Super Bowl MVP for the winning team since 2008 — the modern era based on the shifts of both regular and Super Bowl MVP winners toward quarterbacks.

It isn’t perfect. It couldn’t be perfect — 15 Super Bowls could never demonstrate every possibility. But its familiarity makes logical sense, and that helps fill gaps. A running back has not won a Super Bowl MVP in the last decade and a half. And while that could mean that voters would never vote for a running back MVP in an era when that position’s perceived value is greatly diminished, I believe it is more likely that a running back has simply failed to make a conventional statistical case for an MVP in the small sample of the last 15 Super Bowls. In fact, C.J. Anderson in the 2015 season and Damien Williams in the 2019 season are the only running backs who finished within a couple of Super Bowl MVP points of their actual MVP-winning teammates.

A Super Bowl MVP scoring system makes sense of an era of actual MVP selections. And it also allows an estimation of Super Bowl MVP odds this year based on player totals in Mahomes and Brock Purdy starts from the last two seasons.

2024 Super Bowl MVP Candidates

Patrick Mahomes

Implied Odds: +205 (20 of 29 MVP Point wins * a 47.5% win probability as 1.5-point underdogs)
Actual Odds: +140

Patrick Mahomes unsurprisingly lapped the field on his team with 20 MVP Point wins in his 29 starts the last two seasons, 16 more than second-place Travis Kelce. But the star quarterback missed the gold medal total in close to a third of his starts. Most weren’t for turnovers. Mahomes has five games with two or more turnovers the last two seasons. But he lost three of them — a presumably disqualifying result for a Super Bowl MVP winner — and he rallied for 300-plus yards and two touchdowns in the other two. No, Mahomes lost most of his game MVPs when he threw for modest totals of 250 or fewer yards and just one touchdown and when he funneled his passing to one featured receiver. That may sound like an unlikely combination of events. But it is more likely than ever with the team’s better defensive than offensive DVOA. And Mahomes has actually yielded the game MVP to a skill-player teammate in four consecutive starts.

Travis Kelce

Implied Odds: +1,426 (4 of 29 MVP Point wins * a 47.5% win probability as 1.5-point underdogs)
Actual Odds: +1,400

Travis Kelce has made this exercise easy with two of his four game MVP wins in the last two playoff rounds. And those Divisional and Conference Championship round outbursts followed similar paths to his previous victories. In all four of his wins, Kelce has caught every Mahomes touchdown pass. In three of the four, he’s caught at least two touchdowns. In three of the four, he’s had at least 100 receiving yards. And in three of the four, he’s accounted for at least 47% of Mahomes’ passing yards. Kelce will have his best chance for a Super Bowl MVP if Mahomes throws for fewer than 250 yards and throws exactly two touchdowns, both to him. But the star tight end could conceivably best a big Mahomes day with 100 or more yards and three or more touchdowns like he had in Week 11 of 2022. Or maybe if he proposed to Taylor Swift.

A Chiefs Running Back

Implied Odds: +1,935 (3 of 29 MVP Point wins * a 47.5% win probability as 1.5-point underdogs)
Actual Odds: Isiah Pacheco +4,000

Isiah Pacheco earned his two previous MVP wins with 150-plus rushing yards and a touchdown — and on sub-250-yard and one-touchdown Mahomes days. And that sort of split seems possible facing a 49ers defense that ranks fourth in pass defense and 15th in run defense DVOA and just allowed 182 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns to the Lions last week. But Pacheco should also see an easier path assuming teammate Jerick McKinnon misses the Super Bowl with the groin injury that has him on injured reserve. McKinnon has one of the three Chiefs running back MVPs from the last two seasons. But since he’s been out, Pacheco has jumped from 2.8 to 3.4 catches per game. And if he repeated his season high seven catches from Week 17 and saw a modest Mahomes passing performance, Pacheco could cobble together an MVP case with a lower three-digit rushing total.

A Chiefs Wide Receiver

Implied Odds: +6,005 (1 of 29 MVP Point wins * a 47.5% win probability as 1.5-point underdogs)
Actual Odds: Rashee Rice +6,000

Rashee Rice earned the one Chiefs receiver MVP from the last two seasons with eight catches, 130 yards and a touchdown in this year’s Wild Card Round. His was the team’s lone receiving touchdown that week, and his 130 yards were barely shy of half of Mahomes’ 262 passing yards. It seems difficult to argue that Rice is undervalued at +6,000 when just one Chiefs wide receiver has an MVP in the last 29 Mahomes starts. But the rookie Rice first hit his current 70%-plus snap share standard in Week 14 this season. The team had not had this featured of a wide receiver since Tyreek Hill left after 2021. And I believe that makes Rice a value even if his odds match the implied ones for all Chiefs wide receivers combined.

A Chiefs Defender

Implied Odds: +6,005 (1 of 29 MVP Point wins * a 47.5% win probability as 1.5-point underdogs)
Actual Odds: Chris Jones +10,000, George Karlaftis +10,000

Chris Jones and George Karlaftis are the only two Chiefs defenders on the board for Super Bowl MVP. But it was actually second-string cornerback Jaylen Watson who earned the team’s lone defender game MVP nod way back in Week 2 of 2022. Watson swung that Chiefs win with a 99-yard pick-six, and it may take a defensive touchdown to steal an MVP from the big four of Mahomes, Kelce, Pacheco and Rice. Malcolm Smith won one of the two actual defender Super Bowl MVPs with the help of a 69-yard pick-six. And while Von Miller did not score in his MVP performance, he racked up two and a half sacks and two forced fumbles, totals that even Jones has matched just once in his eight-year career — and not since his early 20s in 2017.

Christian McCaffrey

Implied Odds: +344 (9 of 21 MVP Point wins * a 52.5% win probability as 1.5-point favorites)
Actual Odds: +500

Christian McCaffrey may never have had a realistic shot to win the league MVP this season. But the veteran back has out-earned Brock Purdy with 9 game MVPs versus 6 in Purdy’s 21 starts the last two seasons, and it’s easy to envision his Super Bowl MVP circumstances. In eight of his nine wins, McCaffrey had 125 or more yards from scrimmage. In six of his nine, he had two or more total touchdowns. And in his only game without either, Purdy threw for just 214 yards and did not score in a 19-12 win over Dallas in last year’s Divisional Round. The 49ers defense spurred that win, but they did not produce a clear-cut defensive MVP candidate without a touchdown and with their two interceptions and one sack distributed among three different defenders.

Brock Purdy

Implied Odds: +567 (6 of 21 MVP Point wins * a 52.5% win probability as 1.5-point favorites)
Actual Odds: +200

Brock Purdy seems to lose a lot of his regular season MVP credibility because of his 49ers’ skill-player talent after the catch. But my Super Bowl MVP scoring system isn’t sophisticated enough to consider before- and after-catch splits, and Purdy has still won less than 30% of his game MVPs the last two seasons. The 49ers have the No. 2 rushing offense, so it may not surprise that he has yielded so many MVP wins to McCaffrey, specifically. But counterintuitively on a team with so much star power, Purdy has seemed to concentrate his passing to one star receiver most weeks. That star is different from week to week, and that makes it difficult for Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk or George Kittle to stand out over the course of a full season. But any of that trio could easily contribute 100-plus yards and multiple touchdowns in the Super Bowl. And that makes them more than reasonable candidates for a Super Bowl MVP.

Deebo Samuel

Implied Odds: +1,614 (2 of 18 MVP Point wins * a 52.5% win probability as 1.5-point favorites)
Actual Odds: +1,800

The lack of recent running back MVPs may not support such an argument. But I suspect Deebo Samuel increases his MVP odds with his unique rushing contributions for a nominal wide receiver. Samuel earned his two game MVP wins back-to-back in Weeks 13 and 14 this season. And in both, he complemented 100-plus-yard and 1-plus touchdown receiving days with a rushing touchdown.

Brandon Aiyuk

Implied Odds: +1,805 (2 of 20 MVP Point wins * a 52.5% win probability as 1.5-point favorites)
Actual Odds: +6,000

Brandon Aiyuk has dramatically worse MVP odds than his wide receiver teammate. But he has the same two game MVP wins over the last two seasons and has just two more games played in Purdy starts. Aiyuk may not contribute as a rusher, but he is the leading 49ers candidate to match the Kelce MVP standard by contributing half of Purdy’s passing yards and catching every Purdy touchdown. In fact, he managed that feat earlier this season with 129 yards and two touchdowns in a Week 1 win over the Steelers.

George Kittle

Implied Odds: +1,900 (2 of 21 MVP Point wins * a 52.5% win probability as 1.5-point favorites)
Actual Odds: +6,000

Geoge Kittle has been a boom-and-bustier statistical contributor than his teammates Samuel and Aiyuk this season. But that profile is hardly a bad thing in a pursuit of a Super Bowl MVP. Kittle earned his pair of MVPs with back-to-back two-touchdown outbursts in Weeks 15 and 16 of 2022. And while the Chiefs aren’t a clear defense to exploit with tight ends with their top 10 defensive DVOA against and just four touchdowns allowed to the position this season, Kittle and the 49ers offense present a unique challenge for defenses with their positional versatilities. Kittle is a reasonable long shot for two scores next Sunday, and he has reasonable long shot odds at +6,000.

The Super Bowl MVP scoring system is more of a back-of-the-envelope than statistically rigorous MVP handicapper. But it has an appealing foundation in actual game results, and its odds estimates are remarkably similar to this year’s real MVP odds. And if you can accept the framework, then its takeaway is clear. It is entirely reasonable to make non-quarterback Super Bowl MVP bets. And subjectively, I see Christian McCaffrey at +500 as the best MVP bet this year. The recent Super Bowl MVP voting standards name McCaffrey as a more frequent game MVP winner than his quarterback Brock Purdy over the last two seasons. And McCaffrey offers two-and-a-half times the potential payout of Purdy at +200.

Cited Super Bowl MVP odds are from ESPN.