The season’s most valuable player need not be its most dazzling offensive performer.
Picture the final Sunday: a quarterback has turned a flawed roster into a 13-win contender, while a running back or receiver is completing a season of historic statistical force. Both have legitimate claims—but the claims answer different questions.
MVP voting usually rewards impact on winning, which strongly favors quarterbacks because they control more snaps, decisions, and expected points than any other position. Offensive Player of the Year more often recognizes the league’s most exceptional offensive performance, allowing efficiency, production, and positional dominance to outweigh team dependence. Yet neither award has a rigid definition, and quarterbacks remain eligible for both. That overlap also shapes how NFL futures markets price awards races: similar candidates can carry sharply different odds as voters separate value from brilliance. The honors are related, not interchangeable; the dispute begins with what best is supposed to mean.
Value and production are not the same
The Associated Press NFL Most Valuable Player rewards consequential value: the player judged most responsible for changing his team’s competitive outlook. AP Offensive Player of the Year focuses more directly on offensive excellence—production, efficiency, dominance, and the difficulty of what a player accomplished.
| Question | MVP | Offensive Player of the Year |
|---|---|---|
| Who is eligible? | Any player, in principle | Offensive players only |
| Main emphasis | Team-altering value | Individual offensive performance |
| Positional tendency | Strongly favors quarterbacks | More open to backs and receivers |
| Can one player win both? | Yes | Yes |
Quarterbacks dominate MVP voting because they influence more plays than any other position and drive passing efficiency, scoring, and game state. OPOY gives voters room to honor a historic receiver or running back even when a quarterback is considered more valuable overall. A quarterback can still win OPOY, particularly after an exceptional statistical season.
Neither award is determined by a published formula, statistical threshold, or official NFL front-office panel. Both are AP awards, selected by a national media voting panel and presented at NFL Honors. That judgment-based process explains why narratives, team success, late-season performance, and positional context matter alongside raw numbers—and why sportsbooks list increasingly varied NFL awards markets despite there being no mechanical scoring model.
What turns an excellent season into an MVP case
Quarterbacks enjoy a structural advantage because they control more plays and shape passing efficiency, scoring, and game state. No rule restricts MVP to the position, but another player must demonstrate comparable team-level influence.
Team success strengthens the link between performance and value, especially when the candidate drove close wins or compensated for roster weaknesses. Record alone cannot separate individual impact from coaching, defense, and schedule.
Games missed reduce accumulated value and give rivals more opportunities to affect a season. A brief absence is survivable when the remaining résumé is exceptional, but durability usually breaks close comparisons.
Late drives, elite opponents, division races, and prime-time games can reveal how directly a player changed a season. Memorable moments matter most when supported by a strong full-season baseline.
What demonstrates offensive dominance
Volume establishes how much offense a player created; efficiency shows the cost of creating it. The strongest cases pair major yardage, touchdowns, or first downs with excellent rate statistics and limited negative plays.
Weekly reliability matters, particularly when opponents tilt coverage, crowd the box, or alter personnel to contain one player. Matchup pressure can be evidence of dominance even when it suppresses the box score.
Records gain force when they reflect meaningful superiority rather than a schedule change or expanded season. Era-adjusted rates and the gap over the next-best player often reveal more than a round-number milestone.
OPOY is often described as the best non-quarterback award because MVP voting leans toward quarterbacks, but that is shorthand, not a restriction. Quarterbacks remain eligible when their offensive season is the league’s most outstanding.
How the AP ballot becomes an award
The Associated Press uses separate ranked ballots for MVP and Offensive Player of the Year. The same 50-member nationwide media panel votes on both.
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Regular season ends
Voters assess only regular-season performance. Ballots are completed after Week 18 and before the playoffs begin, although winners are announced during Super Bowl week.
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Voters rank candidates
MVP ballots list five players, scored 10-5-3-2-1. OPOY ballots list three, scored 5-3-1; the highest point total wins each award.
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Judgment fills the gaps
AP supplies the ballot structure, not a universal definition of “valuable” or “outstanding.” Each voter decides how to weigh position, statistics, efficiency, team success, availability, and surrounding talent.
That settles whether playoff games count toward NFL MVP: they do not. A spectacular postseason may reshape how a season is remembered, but it cannot legitimately alter votes already submitted—or repair a regular-season case that fell short.
Why voters split the honors
Splitting the awards is often a coherent judgment, not a compromise. An elite quarterback may create the most total value because every dropback can alter protection, coverage and game state. A running back or receiver, meanwhile, can separate from positional peers so dramatically that ignoring the season’s best offensive performance would seem equally wrong.
Value versus peer separation
MVP voting tends to resemble a replacement-value question: how much would the team decline without this player? Because quarterback performance governs passing efficiency—the strongest driver of modern scoring—a modest statistical edge at quarterback can carry more team value than a huge edge at another position.
OPOY more readily asks who dominated the role. A receiver leading the league in yards, touchdowns and yards per route run may own a stronger position-relative case than the MVP quarterback, even if the quarterback remains more valuable in absolute terms.
Separating production from its environment
Non-quarterback statistics require careful attribution. Voters may weigh:
- Line play: blocking quality can create rushing yards before contact or time for routes to develop.
- Scheme: motion, play action and manufactured touches can inflate favorable opportunities.
- Supporting cast: complementary threats affect coverage and box counts.
- Volume: raw totals may reflect attempts or targets more than superiority.
- Efficiency: success rate, EPA, route efficiency and performance against loaded defenses reveal more than counting totals alone.
Quarterbacks are not context-free, either. Protection, play-calling and receiver separation can make an efficient season easier, while difficult throws, pressure performance and pre-snap control strengthen an individual case.
Ultimately, indispensability has competing meanings. The quarterback may be hardest for the team to replace; the runner or receiver may be hardest for opponents to contain. Splitting MVP and OPOY allows voters to recognize both forms without pretending they are identical.
Can one player win both awards?
Yes. The same player may be named on both ballots and can win both awards in the same season. Voters do not have to reserve Offensive Player of the Year for an MVP runner-up or for a non-quarterback.
Several quarterback seasons were overwhelming enough to sweep both honors:
- Tom Brady, 2007: 50 touchdown passes, a then-record, for a 16–0 Patriots team.
- Peyton Manning, 2013: NFL records of 5,477 passing yards and 55 touchdown passes.
- Matt Ryan, 2016: league-best marks in passer rating and yards per attempt while leading Atlanta’s top-scoring offense.
- Patrick Mahomes, 2018: 5,097 passing yards and 50 touchdowns in his first season as a full-time starter.
Those sweeps show that quarterback preference in MVP voting does not prevent the same performance from being judged the league’s best offensive season. Yet the awards often split when another position produces something historically distinctive.
Recent results make that contrast clear. Cooper Kupp won 2021 OPOY after capturing the receiving triple crown, while Aaron Rodgers won MVP. Christian McCaffrey took 2023 OPOY with 2,023 scrimmage yards and 21 touchdowns, while Lamar Jackson won MVP. Through the latest completed season, Josh Allen won 2024 MVP, while Saquon Barkley earned OPOY after rushing for 2,005 yards.
A sweep signals consensus around one offensive season; a split separates quarterback value from extraordinary production elsewhere.
Which case does the evidence actually support?
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Start with control over winning
Ask how much the player shaped game outcomes, team efficiency, and championship viability. Quarterback creation, late-down conversion, avoidance of negative plays, and performance when alternatives failed all strengthen an MVP case.
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Separate production from replaceability
Huge totals establish offensive excellence, but MVP requires a further question: how much of that output depended on scheme, blocking, supporting talent, or favorable game states? Value rises when elite results appear difficult to reproduce with a plausible replacement.
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Measure dominance within the position
For OPOY, compare the candidate with positional peers through volume, efficiency, consistency, explosive-play creation, and defensive attention. A receiver or running back can own this axis without matching a quarterback’s influence on every offensive snap.
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Apply each award’s own question
The same discipline used to understand Comeback Player of the Year voting criteria applies here: judge the candidate against the award’s purpose, not a generic idea of a great season. Narrative can support evidence, but should not replace it.
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Allow both answers to be yes
A dual win is coherent when one season provides the league’s strongest evidence of team-altering value and its most exceptional offensive performance. The awards overlap; they are not mutually exclusive.
OPOY should not be treated as the runner-up trophy for a non-quarterback who misses MVP.
- MVP evidence is strongest when impact survives adjustments for teammates, system, and replacement level.
- OPOY can recognize unmatched offensive dominance even when another player exerts greater control over winning.
The cleanest evaluation uses two axes: overall value and offensive performance. A candidate may lead either one or both, so the final classification should follow the evidence rather than positional sympathy or consolation logic.