Most NFL experts believe Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes will win MVP award
The NFL Honors Show is Saturday night in Atlanta, and there apparently won’t be much drama when it’s time to reveal the Most Valuable Player.
Early in the 2018 season, there seemed to be a groundswell of support for New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees. But Brees’ numbers tailed off late in the year, and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes became the clear favorite to win the award.
The site SportsBettingDime shows Bovada has put Mahomes’ odds of winning the NFL’s highest honor at minus-230 (a minus means the team or person is the favorite), followed by Brees at plus-145 and Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers at plus-2500.
Twenty NFL.com analysts made their picks for the NFL Honors Show, which is at 8 p.m. Saturday and will be shown on CBS (Ch. 5). Mahomes was the choice for MVP by 19 of those polled: Judy Battista, Jeremy Bergman, Will Blackmon, Gil Brandt, Reggie Bush, David Carr, Charley Casserly, Jeffri Chadiha, Cynthia Frelund, Dan Hanzus, James Jones, Maurice Jones-Drew, Willie McGinest, Shaun O’Hara, Gregg Rosenthal, Adam Schein, Nick Shook, Reggie Wayne and Rod Woodson.
Herbie Teope was the lone person to pick Brees.
Chadiha wrote: “What more can you say about a quarterback who threw for 5,097 yards and 50 touchdowns in his first season as a starter? The scariest thing about Mahomes is that he’s only going to get better.”
Last month, five writers for The Ringer all picked Mahomes for MVP. Danny Heifetz wrote: “Mahomes aced the numbers test and broke the eye test. If you don’t have Mahomes as MVP, you better have Andy Reid as Coach of the Year.”
The five CBS Sports writers all picked Mahomes, too.
“The biggest difference between Mahomes and Brees is that Mahomes literally had to carry his team every week,” CBS’ John Breech wrote. “The Chiefs defense finished 2018 ranked as the second-worst defense in the NFL, which means that Mahomes and the offense had to blow up the scoreboard every week to win, and sometimes, that wasn’t even enough. In the Chiefs’ four losses, the offense scored 40, 51, 28 and 31.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2019 at 8:44 AM.
