🔗 Share this article

In recent National Football League years, a pattern has developed. By the eighth week of the campaign, the MVP conversation often becomes a predictable story, highlighting names like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson.

From 2015 and 2019, the league saw several debut MVP winners – Cam Newton, Matt Ryan, Mahomes, and Jackson. But in the past five years, only Allen has entered that group as a first-time winner.

Allen is the favorite to win again this season, which would mark the fifth time in six years a previous winner has secured the award. Yet voter fatigue is real; voters wants a new star. This year’s crop of potential first-time contenders feels unusually deep and entertaining. Maybe they won’t win this year, but let’s look at the athletes who could challenge the Mahomes-Allen-Jackson triumvirate in the coming seasons.

A few notes: the scores below reflect each player’s chances of winning the award in the next few years, not necessarily this season. We’ve also left out regular candidates like Joe Burrow, Matthew Stafford, and Dak Prescott to shine a light on some more distant shots.

Sam Darnold, Seattle

It’s no more a joke: Darnold is currently one of the best quarterbacks in the league. During his time in Minnesota, it was easy to underestimate his ascent. Observers could point to the scheme and his excellent teammates. That’s no longer the case in Seattle.

The Seahawks’ ground attack has yet to click. The offensive line is improved but still lags behind the league’s elite. Jaxon Smith-Njigba has been among the five best receivers this year, but he’s been elevated by Darnold’s decision-making and accuracy.

Seattle has redesigned their attack around Darnold, who is only 28 years old. They aim for big plays, banking on Darnold’s arm to push the ball downfield. In that role, he looks more like Stafford than the version we saw during his Jets tenure. Early in his career, Darnold struggled under pressure, frequently making expensive turnovers. He’s largely eliminated those mistakes from his game. Whereas before he saw ghosts, now he creates plays when protection breaks down or the offense design falls apart.

Look through any QB metric you like, and Darnold is among the best. He tops the league in the RBSDM composite, which measures the impact of every offensive play and assigns responsibility to the quarterback. The player who finishes first in that stat typically lands in the top three for MVP voting.

Through five weeks, Darnold has proved that last year’s showing in Minnesota was not a fluke. This is now who he is, and it’s been an improvement for Seattle over Geno Smith. If he can guide the Seahawks to a division crown, the comeback narrative could propel him into the conversation with Allen and Mahomes.

MVP Probability: 7/10. This current season may be his strongest chance to win it.

Baker Mayfield, Tampa Bay

Talking of redemption stories. There was a period when the Panthers employed Mayfield and Darnold. Yikes. Mayfield has gone from a scout team pass-rusher in Carolina to a franchise quarterback in Tampa Bay.

The MVP is, partly, a story-driven award, and few have a more compelling journey than Mayfield. Burrow, Stafford, and Prescott are more skilled quarterbacks. But there is something about his story that should garner extra points from voters. Multiple franchises gave up on him before he landed in Tampa. He’s had three different offensive coordinators in the past three seasons, yet has kept to pilot the Bucs offense at a high level.

Mayfield hasn’t been as clean this year as he was in 2024. Down to down, he’s been a bit inconsistent. But he’s working in a difficult situation: Tampa’s run game has struggled, and the O-line has been hurt by injuries. Still in spite of those problems, Mayfield is playing the best football of his career. He’s already guided the Bucs to four game-winning drives this year and tops the league in Big Time Throw Rate. He is achieving more with less, including waltzing into Seattle with a beat-up line and dropping 38 points on one of the top defenses in the league.

In an era before modern analytics, Mayfield would be leading this year’s MVP conversation. He has carried his team on his back to a greater extent than any other quarterback in crunch time. Voters still value that trait, but not quite to the same degree they did in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Most Valuable Player Likelihood: 4/10. His risk-taking style will cause him to lose a few games.

Daniels, Washington

Daniels returned from injury against the Chargers on Sunday and showed everyone why, last season, he was the standout rookie to enter the league in a long time. Daniels shredded the Chargers in the second half on the away, carrying the Commanders to a decisive win in LA.

It hasn’t been the smoothest start to his second season. The Commanders’ team-building approach around Daniels has been unusual. They’ve tried to accelerate success, recognizing they have a gem special with a quarterback on a low-cost rookie contract. But they’re left with the oldest roster in the league by a wide margin. And it is evident, especially on defense.

Over the near term, Washington’s roster makeup could limit Daniels. But he remains a single-handed supernova at the game’s most valuable position. He is the most similar quarterback in the league to Jackson: a precision passer who is also dynamic with the ball in his hands as a runner. If he can push the Commanders past the Eagles at the summit of the NFC East in the next couple years, he will be a sure thing for the award.

Most Valuable Player Probability: 8/10. The surest player from his vaunted rookie class to win in the next three years.

Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers

It was all going very well for Herbert and the Chargers. Two weeks into the season, it felt like this was the year. Finally, the parts around him were set. And the Chargers had shifted to a Herbert-centric offense, turning from a run-focused team into a passing one. It was as if Jim Harbaugh set out with the goal of winning Herbert the MVP award just as much as he was looking to overthrow the Chiefs in the AFC West.

That’s changed now. The Chargers have lost several players along their offensive line. They lost a very winnable game against the Giants and were hammered along both sides of the line of scrimmage by the Commanders. The challenge level for Herbert at this point, this season, is too high. Even to keep the chains going, he has to put on his superhero cape. That’s fun in short samples – and valuable for the MVP award when it comes under a national spotlight – but not sustainable over the grind of a regular season.

Herbert has MVP ability. When the Chargers are healthy, he is the top candidate for the award among the players on this list. He fits the billing: the rule of freshness, the playmaking, the winning. He passes the eye test and has a dominance over some of the most advanced metrics. But it will not be this year.

MVP Probability: 9/10. Eventually, the Chargers will stay healthy, and Herbert will succeed.

Travis Hunter, Jacksonville

The MVP is a quarterback award – the last non-QB to win it was Adrian Peterson in the 2012 season. Still, playing on both sides of the ball is a big advantage for anyone trying to upset the quarterback dominance.

It’s been an inauspicious start for Hunter as a two-way phenom. The Jags have switched back and forth between primarily using him on offense and defense. Last week, they settled on a 40-snap rotation on either side of the ball. And that feels like the right number for a rookie trying to adjust to the pace of the pro game while learning a complicated offense and the league’s most tricky defense.

Hunter has been fine as a rookie, but he hasn’t been an immediate gamechanger. There have been flashes of the ability that made him the Heisman winner, but he has yet to take over a game while playing both ways. At some point, the Jags may choose using him on a single side while only bringing him on the field for select packages the other way. But that’s not the strategy at the moment.

That may make Hunter’s growth curve steeper, but it also ups his MVP potential. Who else could realistically have 10+ touchdowns as a receiver while also grabbing five or more takeaways? If Hunter fulfills his two-way potential on each sides of the ball, voters will look past the quarterbacks.

Most Valuable Player Probability: 5/10. The only “defensive” player who has a sniff.

Drake Maye, New England Patriots

Maye burst into the national spotlight with his {performance