-
Bill Barnwell, ESPN Staff Writer
Let’s hand out midseason awards for the NFL season. Having crunched the numbers and watched thousands of plays, I’ve seen an awful lot of football this year. I won’t pretend I can explain how the Chiefs are 8-0, but as someone who predicted they would win 16 games, I’m not complaining. Better to be lucky than good.
Despite their record, the Chiefs don’t really factor into this column, which is a product of them being a deep, talented team and having strengths in places that don’t end up in awards columns, such as offensive line. In trying to evaluate every team, I’m going to nominate the occasional player who has excelled on an otherwise disappointing team.
Subscribe: ‘The Bill Barnwell Show’
Keep in mind these are my picks for what I’ve seen through nine weeks this season, not my predictions for who the voters will pick at the end of the regular season. I consider some of these awards a little differently than the electorate, and I’ll mention how my feelings differ in each section. There’s a lot to get to, so I’m going to treat the Comeback Player of the Year award as a pre-ceremony honor and hand it to quarterback Kirk Cousins for his work with the 6-3 Atlanta Falcons. Let’s start with the guys who roam the sideline and hand out an award to a coach who somehow hasn’t won one of these during a Hall of Fame career:
Jump to an award:
MVP | Best coach
OROY | DROY
OPOY | DPOY
Coach of the Year
This award almost always goes to a coach whose team drastically outperforms its preseason win/loss predictions. Sometimes, that leads to Sean McVay (2017) or Jim Harbaugh (2011) earning this award. Other times, it has gone to Brian Daboll (2022) or Matt Nagy (2018). In other words, Coach of the Year appears to be a trophy for exceeding expectations.
There’s nothing wrong with considering things that way, but I want to be a little more holistic in how I approach Coach of the Year. Are players getting better? Are there players who have joined the organization and improved? Has the coach successfully overcome adversity? If a coach focuses on one side of the ball, is he driving success on that side of the ball, or is he being carried to a good record by something he’s mostly handing off to a coordinator?
That last one informs a little bit of my logic in dropping the guy I expect to win the real award to second in my rankings:
3. Kevin O’Connell, Vikings
O’Connell has to get significant credit for building an effective offense around journeyman quarterback Sam Darnold. Watch the Vikings closely and you’ll see an offense that does everything it can to make its quarterback’s life easier, with smart motions, alignments and progressions to aid Darnold’s decision-making. Nobody right now is better at getting more out of a star wideout than O’Connell is with wide receiver Justin Jefferson.
The offense, though, isn’t quite as impressive as it might seem. While the Vikings rank seventh in points scored, they’re 14th in points scored per possession and 15th in expected points added (EPA) per play. Darnold has thrown interceptions on more than 3% of his dropbacks and taken sacks more than 10% of the time. O’Connell has gotten more out of Darnold than any other coach, but a defense that ranks second by EPA per play has really been what has driven the Vikings to 6-2.
Quinn deserves a lot of credit for helping to immediately rebuild the culture in Washington. As ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported recently, this is a place where players now want to play. Some of that is the possibility of catching passes from rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, of course — and veterans such as linebacker Bobby Wagner and tight end Zach Ertz are playing their part in establishing the new-look Washington franchise — but Quinn surely has played a meaningful role in getting the Commanders out to a shocking 7-2 start.
Is his defense making the difference here, though? It ranks second in the league in EPA per play on offense and 25th on defense. Washington has improved as the season has gone along — and the addition of cornerback Marshon Lattimore at the trade deadline should help things even further — but the offense has been carrying this team to victories. While Coordinator of the Year isn’t an official AP award, given how the Commanders have performed, it would feel more appropriate to give Kliff Kingsbury a Coordinator of the Year nod than Quinn the Coach of the Year.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to poke holes in what Tomlin has done. His defense ranks second in points allowed and fifth in EPA per play. While the Steelers are blessed to have edge rusher T.J. Watt and safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, this has been a complete effort. Joey Porter Jr. has continued to play like an upper-echelon cornerback. Outside linebacker Alex Highsmith has been brilliant, and when he was injured, Nick Herbig flashed with big plays. Safety DeShon Elliott and corner Donte Jackson have played much better in Pittsburgh than they did in their prior stops, while Tomlin has turned undrafted rookie free agent Beanie Bishop into an immediate contributor.
While Tomlin isn’t as hands-on with the offense, he has gotten the big decisions right. The Steelers have become a more efficient rushing attack after hiring coordinator Arthur Smith, even as injuries have prevented them from rolling out their desired starting five up front for most of the season. The offense was passable with Justin Fields at quarterback, but Tomlin made a brave choice in going from Fields to Russell Wilson under center, and Pittsburgh has scored 63 points over its two ensuing victories.
I’ve been skeptical of the Steelers over the past few years because their underlying performance hasn’t matched their win-loss record, and history tells us that outperforming point differential and record in close games eventually catches up with teams. Well, Pittsburgh has responded to that by simply improving its performance. It’s 6-2 with a Pythagorean expectation of … exactly six wins. It has gone 1-2 in games decided by seven points or fewer, although it does have two victories by exactly eight points. The Steelers are a nightmare to play and have made teams beat themselves. It seems like the head coach, who has somehow never won this award, might have something to do with that.
My pick after Week 4: O’Connell
Defensive Rookie of the Year
In a season in which the first 14 players off the board in April’s draft play offense, there understandably hasn’t been a huge amount of interest in this rookie class on the other side of the ball. These defensive awards usually lean toward pass rushers, and most of the top picks on the defensive line have missed time. Dallas Turner (Vikings) and Byron Murphy (Seahawks) have been unavailable for stretches, while Chop Robinson (Dolphins) and Laiatu Latu (Colts) have been used on about half of the defensive snaps for their teams.
My pick after four weeks was Texans cornerback Kamari Lassiter, but his candidacy has been derailed by missing two games in October. Two games might not exclude a player from winning an award at the end of the season, but it would take something truly spectacular for a defender to miss nearly a quarter of the season and still take home any hardware, with Odell Beckham Jr.‘s 2014 award as a notable exception.
Most of the top candidates for consideration here are in the secondary, where 11 players have suited up for at least 300 defensive snaps. Tyler Nubin (Giants), Mike Sainristil (Commanders) and Terrion Arnold (Lions) have established themselves as solid regulars, with Arnold a candidate for this list if he would just stop committing penalties. I’ve been really impressed with Cooper DeJean (Eagles) and Tarheeb Still (Chargers), albeit after they sat on the bench for most of September. In the end, there’s a large gap between the top two and everyone else.
Pick: Undrafted
It’s typically almost impossible for a rookie to play significant snaps for the Steelers in the secondary. Longtime contributors Ike Taylor and Bryant McFadden and even legends such as Rod Woodson and Troy Polamalu failed to start a single game during their rookie seasons. When Joey Porter Jr. broke through into the starting lineup in 2023, it was a notable exception to recent Pittsburgh history.
Bishop hasn’t been quite as significant of a revelation, but it’s telling that his role has grown as the season has progressed. After playing about 60% of the snaps to begin the season, he has now started three games in the slot and seen his role grow north of 80% over the past two weeks. He has rewarded Tomlin & Co. with three interceptions in those two games, including a spectacular play that turned the tide in a game the Steelers were trailing before halftime against the Jets. The other two were on a drop and an overthrow, but that’s where most interceptions come from, right?
Bishop is a feisty, fun player to watch in the middle of the field. He shows up as a tackler and against the run. The Falcons were able to get him for a touchdown in Week 1 when he didn’t get the sort of depth he needed in zone coverage near the end zone, but he did a great job of squeezing a route up the sideline later in the game to help create a key interception by Donte Jackson. Bishop is a plus contributor on one of the league’s best defenses.
Pick: No. 22
The biggest reason the Eagles have improved on defense has been the play of the two cornerbacks whom general manager Howie Roseman selected with his top two picks. Cooper DeJean spent the first month of the season on the bench before getting into the lineup in the slot, and his tackling and route recognition have been excellent.
Mitchell has been a steady presence on the outside all season. Playing as the starting right cornerback, he has been peppered with targets that haven’t amounted to much. Opposing quarterbacks have posted a 51.4 QBR throwing to the left side of the field (the right side of the defense) against the Eagles this season, the third-lowest mark for any team. Passers have otherwise posted the ninth-best QBR throwing over the middle and toward the right side of the field.
It’s a surprise Mitchell doesn’t have an interception. He had a shot at a pick-six against Kirk Cousins in Week 2 and then again against Derek Carr the following week. He broke up a handful of speed outs to opposing receivers over the first month, and quarterbacks have learned their lesson. Passers’ ball placement needs to be absolutely perfect if they want to throw to the outside against Mitchell.
Mitchell has had a rough moment or two. The Falcons were able to pick on him during their game-winning drive, picking up chunk plays on back-to-back gains to Darnell Mooney. Sterling Shepard beat him on a double-move for 30 yards in the Bucs game. Mitchell has improved as the season has gone along, though, and the 23-year-old might already be Philadelphia’s best cornerback.
Pick: No. 19
The only consistently productive edge rusher in this draft so far is the guy I’m picking here. Verse is blowing away the class by virtually every metric we use to gauge production for edge defenders outside of sacks, where his lead on teammate Braden Fiske and the rest of the league is only one half-sack.
Verse has nine tackles for loss, three more than any other rookie. He has been credited with 24 pressures; the only other rookie with more than 12 is Fiske, who’s at 17. His 13 quarterback hits are tied for 12th in the league and nearly double that of any other first-year defender. He leads all rookies in pass rush win rate (19.3%) and ranks 11th among all edge rushers by that metric. He has also done that while being double-teamed at the league’s fourth-highest rate among edge rushers.
It’s probably telling that Verse’s first career sack came on a play in which the Lions assigned Sam LaPorta to chip him and Verse still managed to beat a respected left tackle in Taylor Decker. Against the Seahawks last week, he knocked over Charles Cross and then cut across Zach Charbonnet to take down Geno Smith. Verse has the power to get underneath tackles and drive them yards backward and the speed and agility to create pressures as a quarterback spy. Missed tackles have been a problem, but he is already the most important player on this L.A. defense and has quickly emerged as a force in the NFC.
My pick after Week 4: Lassiter
Offensive Rookie of the Year
With so many potential offensive stars going in the top 15 of the draft, there are no concerns about a lack of viable candidates for this award. Receivers Marvin Harrison Jr. (Cardinals), Ladd McConkey (Chargers) and Keon Coleman (Bills) have all flashed with excellent weeks. Tyrone Tracy Jr. (Giants) and Bucky Irving (Bucs) have stepped in and immediately elevated their teams’ running games. Broncos quarterback Bo Nix has had some rough games, but he has been efficient as a runner and has won five games. Bears passer Caleb Williams had a three-week stretch with a passer rating north of 122. Some years, those sorts of performances would be enough to get in the top three. Not in 2024.
There are four players in contention for the top three spots. My last player out was wideout Malik Nabers, who missed two games after suffering a concussion. He was averaging nearly 97 receiving yards per game before the injury and has been at 57 since, as the Giants have been more comfortable spreading the ball around and giving more touches to Tracy. Nabers is still a spectacular wideout, but with comparable numbers to the other receivers atop the rookie rankings, I have to lean toward the players who have been there all season.
Pick: No. 23
It has been a disappointing season for about 50 Jaguars players. One of the few exceptions is Thomas, who now leads all rookies in receiving yards (595) and is tied with Harrison for the lead in receiving touchdowns (five). Thomas’ 2.53 yards per route run rank as the best of any rookie and are 11th among all wide receivers this season. His 135 receiving yards over expectation are good for the eighth-best mark. And with Christian Kirk out for the season (collarbone), Thomas’ role in the lineup should only grow as the season continues.
Thomas’ route running and ability to glide into and out of breaks at top speed looks effortless in a good way. Chiefs rookie Xavier Worthy is unquestionably fast but gets easily bumped off his routes and has only one gear. Thomas has the ability to get past 22 mph without looking like he’s straining and has the fluidity to subtly win and create separation on multiple routes. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence already trusts him on contested catches, and he has hit a number of big plays on deep posts, including a 66-yarder against Browns corner Greg Newsome and a 58-yard completion against Patriots star Christian Gonzalez. He’s already a fun wideout, and the best might be yet to come.
Pick: No. 13
Is Bowers already the league’s best receiving tight end? He leads all tight ends in receptions (57), receiving yards (580), first downs (28) and yards after the catch (300). He ranks third in yards per route run behind George Kittle and Trey McBride, which isn’t exactly bad company. About the only hole to poke in his production is a modest total of two touchdowns, although I wouldn’t pin that on him; Gardner Minshew badly overthrew an open Bowers for what should have been a touchdown that instead became Pat Surtain‘s 100-yard pick-six.
It’s a historic start for a rookie tight end. The only rookies with more receiving yards through their first nine games are Mike Ditka and Kyle Pitts. No tight end has more receptions in his first nine contests. Pro Football Reference has first-down data going back through the mid-1990s, and the only rookie tight end with more first downs to begin his career is Jordan Reed, who had 29. Bowers is doing all of this as a 21-year-old.
Bowers has both benefited from an offense that has mostly been devoid of other targets and been hindered by inconsistent quarterback play. He’s already the focal point other teams are trying to take away on game days. (Bill Belichick must be itching to come back and call “one double 89” to get Bowers out of a game.) He is more of an active blocker than an impactful one, and there’s a chance he was involved with a blocking mistake that might have cost the Raiders a game against the Rams. Overall, though, the Raiders have to be thrilled with the player they’ve landed. He’s the best first-round pick they’ve made since Khalil Mack in 2014.
Pick: No. 2
No surprise here. As good as Bowers and the other receivers have been, Daniels has been a class above every other rookie and is a legitimate MVP candidate through the first half of the season. Through their first nine starts, the only quarterbacks in the QBR era with better marks than Daniels’ 76.0 are Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott and Brock Purdy. Mahomes and Purdy were blessed with the best supporting casts in all of football, and Prescott had a great offensive line and Ezekiel Elliott running for 1,631 yards and 15 touchdowns in the same backfield. Does anybody want to argue Daniels is getting the same sort of support?
It would be naive to pretend that Daniels isn’t getting help from an offense that runs plenty of RPOs and screens. At the same time, removing screens from everyone’s performance this season, he actually gets better. His 84.2 QBR on throws that aren’t screens leads the league, and Lamar Jackson is the only other quarterback with a QBR over 80 in those situations. Daniels’ plus-5.3% completion percentage over expectation on those throws ranks third, trailing only Jalen Hurts and Sam Darnold.
Daniels is a spectacular third- and fourth-down quarterback. He has made what feels like countless completions look easy on third down by immediately picking apart a coverage and making an accurate, safe completion for a conversion. Defensive coordinators have tried blitzing him at one of the league’s highest rates, but his ability as a runner and that instant classic of a touchdown pass to Terry McLaurin against the Bengals have made coaches regret that choice. Daniels’ 95.2 QBR versus the blitz ranks second in the league.
We haven’t even considered what Daniels does as a rusher and scrambler. Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury has been careful to limit his usage of Daniels on designed runs to key situations, like fourth downs and inside the red zone. Daniels leads all rookies — quarterbacks or otherwise — in rushing yards (459), most of which has come as a scrambler, where his 343 yards are 90 more than any other player. He scrambles often, but he’s also usually smart to do so. His 71.1% success rate on scrambles is well above league average.
There aren’t many holes to poke in Daniels’ game. He takes a few too many hits and had to sit out most of a win over the Panthers after suffering a rib injury, although he hasn’t been as foolish about inviting blows as quarterbacks such as Anthony Richardson and Justin Herbert. He was excellent avoiding unnecessary hits during Sunday’s win over the Giants, even giving himself up on a zone-read play when it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to outrun Azeez Ojulari to the edge or cut back into space. Daniels has thrown only nine touchdown passes in what amounts to eight games, although he has added four more on the ground and created running lanes for his backs with the threat of keeping the ball. He has been a franchise-transforming player for the Commanders.
My pick after Week 4: Daniels
Defensive Player of the Year
Gulp. When I put together my short list for potential Defensive Player of the Year candidates, it was 15 players long. That’s even after eliminating Aidan Hutchinson (Lions), who was second in my rankings through four games before suffering a season-ending leg injury. Players I know are directly impacting games on every single snap: Chris Jones (Chiefs), Quinnen Williams (Jets), Nick Bosa (49ers) and Maxx Crosby (Raiders) couldn’t even make it into the top 10. It’s brutal.
I can split the honorable mentions into packs. There are the young breakout defensive linemen. Will Anderson Jr. (Texans) already has topped his 2023 sack total, racking up 7.5 sacks in nine games. Will McDonald IV (Jets) has eight sacks and 14 knockdowns and has become essential in New York. Greg Rousseau (Bills) is tied with three others for the league lead with 11 tackles for loss and had a game with 11 pressures against the Titans last month.
There are the safeties putting up gaudy takeaway totals. Xavier McKinney (Packers) has six picks and might be the best free safety in football. Kerby Joseph (Lions) also had six interceptions, including picks in each of his past two games, helping Detroit stay afloat after it lost its top two edge rushers to season-ending injuries. Jessie Bates (Falcons) has only two interceptions, but he has three forced fumbles and has been the centerpiece of an Atlanta defense that has absolutely no pass rush.
There are the Broncos. Defensive end Zach Allen has been unblockable for stretches of time and leads the league in stuffs at the line of scrimmage with 13. Pat Surtain has been essentially a perfect cornerback this season; he has inhibited targets at the league’s second-highest rate, picked off three of the 22 passes in his direction and hasn’t missed a tackle. The only issue is he missed all but one snap of two full games because of a concussion. He might be the NFL’s best defensive player on a snap-by-snap basis so far.
0:59
Are Steelers now Super Bowl contenders?
Andrew Hawkins and Domonique Foxworth discuss why the Steelers are now Super Bowl contenders after acquiring Mike Williams and Preston Smith.
Fred Warner (49ers) was my pick through Week 4, and while he hasn’t continued to stuff the stat sheet, he’s still the easy pick as the league’s best coverage linebacker. He’s tied for the league lead with four forced fumbles, a skill he has added to his game over the past two years. He has eight forced fumbles in the past year and a half after having seven over the prior five campaigns. He could easily be included here.
The last guy off my list isn’t in a pack with anybody. Dexter Lawrence Jr. (Giants) has been rightly regarded for years as one of the best nose tackles, but he has apparently decided to audition as Aaron Donald‘s replacement for the league’s scariest interior lineman. Lawrence had averaged 4.5 sacks per 17 games over his first five years in the league, but this season, he has nine sacks and 14 knockdowns in nine games. New York’s 12.3% sack rate is the NFL’s best and the most for any team through its first nine games since 2001.
The sack numbers inflate Lawrence’s impact as a pass rusher. He has a couple of cleanup sacks on scrambles and a few sacks that probably qualify more as coverage sacks than pass-rush victories. He ranks 32nd among defensive tackles in pass rush win rate, although that comes with him being double-teamed at a higher rate than anybody ahead of him on the list. He’s still an All-Pro defensive tackle, but he was the last cut from this list.
The top three, unintentionally, all ended up being edge rushers from the AFC North:
It has been a disappointing season for the 2-7 Browns, but Garrett continues to overwhelm opposing offensive lines. Consistency has been an issue, with Garrett going without a sack in five of his nine games, but he just produced a three-sack game against the Chargers on Sunday.
If a team needed a player to come up with a pressure on a single play, Garrett is probably the player to choose. He ranks third in pass rush win rate, and according to NFL Next Gen Stats, he has racked up quick pressures on 11.6% of his pass-rush attempts. Nobody else is within 2 percentage points of the 2017 No. 1 pick. Garrett has done that while being double-teamed on nearly 28% of his pass-rush attempts on the edge, which is tied for the highest rate in football.
When the Steelers need a big play from Watt, it seems to happen on command. Think about last week’s game against the Giants, when a rare turnover from the Steelers offense put New York in position to score a tying touchdown. With the Giants in the red zone, what happened? Watt came up with an ankle tackle to stop a Daniel Jones scramble on second down, then immediately beat Jermaine Eluemunor for a strip-sack on third down, recovering the fumble himself.
Watt hasn’t been a one-man show this season; Alex Highsmith and even Nick Herbig have been excellent on the other side of the field. It’s not Watt’s most productive season, as he has 6.5 sacks and 14 knockdowns through eight games. He still has 10 tackles for loss and is tied for the league lead with four forced fumbles, three of which have come in the red zone and ended drives. What, you think the Steelers had the league’s best red zone defense by sheer chance?
Watt is the favorite to win this award in real life, but I’m just not sure how anybody can be ahead of Hendrickson. He leads the league in sacks (11) and quarterback hits (22, five more than anybody else). He’s tied for No. 1 with 11 tackles for loss and ranks second in pass rush win rate behind Hutchinson, with Hendrickson’s 29.9% rate 4 percentage points ahead of the third-placed Garrett (25.8%). He got the Chiefs to bench tackle Kingsley Suamataia two games into the rookie’s career, then immediately forced another penalty to wipe off a huge conversion to Travis Kelce.
Hendrickson is doing this on a team where nobody else is even remotely a threat to get after the quarterback. He has 11 sacks, and the rest of the Bengals’ roster has a grand total of … six. That means he has just under 65% of his team’s total sacks through nine games. That’s tied for the highest share of a team’s sack rate through nine games since 2000 with John Abraham, who did the same thing for the 2008 Falcons.
The Bengals’ defense isn’t great. It ranks 23rd in QBR allowed and 25th in points allowed per drive. Suiting up for a defense that bad might be disqualifying for a player’s candidacy in the eyes of some voters. I understand. Cincinnati might also be the NFL’s worst defense without Hendrickson, given that it has a 3.5% sack rate and a 25.5% pressure rate when he’s on the sideline. There’s little doubt in my mind he has been the league’s best pass rusher this season.
My pick after Week 4: Warner
Offensive Player of the Year
For the uninitiated, I’ll repeat my rule for this award. It makes no sense to have this when the Most Valuable Player nod invariably goes to an offensive player. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Most Valuable Offensive Player wouldn’t also realistically be the Offensive Player of the Year. There have been years when the MVP award went to a quarterback and this award was given to a running back or receiver who amassed a ton of yardage, but how can the league justify that? Did the quarterback have an impact on defense? Did he generate a ton of value holding on kicking plays? It’s just silly.
So, since this is my awards column, I exclude quarterbacks from this conversation. If a running back, wide receiver, tight end or offensive lineman is excelling enough to transcend his position, he can make it into the MVP discussion. Otherwise, quarterbacks are the MVP conversation and everyone else on offense figures in here.
Unlike the Defensive Player of the Year short list, there are only three players who merit consideration here. Two were in our discussion at the quarter-season mark. The third was Texans wide receiver Nico Collins, who went down with a hamstring injury in Week 5 and has yet to return from injured reserve. He’s out of the conversation at this point, but there’s an obvious replacement atop the wide receiver ranks, albeit one who comes in only third here:
With Collins out of the picture, Jefferson has comfortably been the league’s best wide receiver this season. He’s averaging just under 98 receiving yards per game. Among wideouts who have played in every one of their team’s games, no one is within 15 yards per game of Jefferson’s average.
Some wideouts can get there with extravagant workloads, but Jefferson hasn’t commanded an otherworldly target share this season and has averaged 30 routes per game, which pales in comparison with Ja’Marr Chase (33) and CeeDee Lamb (36.5). Jefferson is playing more than 90% of the offensive snaps, but the Vikings have played 58.5 snaps per game on offense, the sixth-fewest per game of any team. He hasn’t had a chance to bump up his counting stats by playing in many wild shootouts or in a high-tempo offense.
Instead, Jefferson has been ruthlessly efficient. His 3.3 yards per route run ranks second behind Collins. More than 31% of his receptions go for 20 or more yards. He has posted a 69.6% catch rate when an average receiver in the same spots would have caught 61.1% of the passes thrown in his direction, per the NFL Next Gen Stats model. The only receivers with more yards over expectation are Chase and Jayden Reed.
Jefferson has been very good, but two backs still tower over the rest of the competition for this award.
Inventing the reverse hurdle last week against the Jaguars certainly earns Barkley some extra points here, but he hardly needs any bonuses. He has been spectacular in his first season with Philadelphia. In an offense in which there were reasonable concerns about whether there would be enough footballs to go around, Barkley is on pace for a career-high 2,276 yards from scrimmage. He’s averaging 5.9 yards per carry and has eight touchdowns in eight games.
Advanced metrics also love Barkley’s work. He has generated 263 rush yards over expectation (RYOE) so far, the second most of any back. As I covered last month in my column on the free agent running back class, he’s producing big plays at career-high rates. And while he has averaged a modest 1.0 yards per route run as a receiver, he has produced a pair of impressive touchdown catches in wins over the Jags and Packers.
1:56
Orlovsky loves the Eagles, doesn’t trust the coach
Despite Eagles’ winning streak, Dan Orlovsky and Rex Ryan question coach Nick Sirianni’s decision-making.
The biggest reason Barkley isn’t No. 1? Negative plays. When he has made mistakes, they’ve been conspicuous and painful. In Week 2, he failed to bring in a third-down catch that would have iced the game, allowing the Falcons to drive down the field and score. In Week 5 against the Browns, he failed to pick up a first down on a second-and-1 completion before halftime, then allowed a sack on third-and-1 that forced the Eagles into a long field goal attempt that was then returned for a touchdown. Last week, he let the Jags back into the game when he fumbled, allowing Jacksonville to scoop and score. Later, he slid down on a second-and-13 run and then got stuffed on third-and-4, which led to another missed field goal and an opportunity for the Jags to drive for what could have been a game-winning score.
Barkley has still been a great player. There have just been some clear negative plays that have been negatives for the team. And when bringing that into the conversation in comparing résumés with the favorite for Offensive Player of the Year, it’s enough to comfortably put Barkley in second.
What can you say? After three years of producing average efficiency in a bad Titans offense, Henry has turned back the years after joining Lamar Jackson in Baltimore. There’s no doubt he benefits from the gravity and attention afforded to Jackson as a runner, but the threat of Henry is creating opportunities for the other players in this offense, too. Putting on purple and black has made him look like he’s 25 again.
The now 30-year-old back is producing a historically significant campaign. Through nine games, Henry has 1,052 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns. The only other backs to top the round numbers of 1,000 rushing yards and 10 rushing touchdowns through the first nine games of the season over the past 40 years are Emmitt Smith in 1995, Terrell Davis in 1998 and Shaun Alexander in 2005. All three won league MVP awards. Henry is on pace for 1,987 rushing yards; if the Ravens want to let him try, there’s a realistic chance he’d make a serious run at Eric Dickerson‘s record of 2,105 rushing yards in a single season.
As it stands, Baltimore has found an excellent balance of relying on Henry in key moments and letting him rest his legs, which has certainly helped after years of massive workloads in Tennessee. He has played only 55% of the offensive snaps this season, which makes it even more preposterous that he’s leading the NFL in yards from scrimmage (1,145). He has also scored a touchdown in each of his first nine games, becoming the ninth player since the merger to pull that off. He’s the first since Todd Gurley got to 10 straight in 2018.
Henry has racked up a staggering 398 RYOE so far, which would be a single-season record for a back over the entire campaign, let alone its first nine weeks. He has a 45.8% success rate to Barkley’s 41.4%. And while Barkley has struggled a bit in short yardage and has roughly been about average in terms of first downs over expectation, Henry has picked up nine first downs over expectation, a figure topped only by James Conner.
If Henry can keep this up, it will be one of the greatest running back seasons we’ve ever seen. I’m not sure he’ll produce as many long runs in the second half, but who would have thought a guy who was splitting time with Tyjae Spears last season would be blowing away the competition in 2024? Another Offensive Player of the Year award would put Henry into rarefied company; every player who has won at least two OPOY awards is either already in the Hall of Fame or is a lock to make it once he’s eligible.
My pick after Week 4: Henry
Most Valuable Player
Henry deserves to be in the MVP consideration, but I wasn’t able to get him ahead of one of a handful of quarterbacks. He probably lands somewhere around sixth in my rankings. Let’s run through the honorable mentions at quarterback who don’t really require a close look before we hit the final five:
Patrick Mahomes is the quarterback of an undefeated team, and the Chiefs’ spectacular performance on third downs undoubtedly owes a fair amount to his brilliance as a processor and creator. Still, he threw interceptions in seven straight games to start the season before finally finishing the game without a pick against the Bucs. He has topped 300 yards just once. It’s a testament to his ability and incredible efficiency that he still ranks sixth in QBR, but I can’t in good conscience put him near the top of the MVP balloting given what we know he’s capable of at his best.
Justin Herbert has been excellent over the past month as the Chargers have morphed into a team with one of the league’s heaviest pass rates, but they were equally as run heavy over the first month of the season. Herbert has only one interception, but he has taken too many unnecessary sacks and hits, including the one that injured his ankle in September. He probably also deserves some credit for doing this with what might be one of the least imposing groups of receivers in the league.
Brock Purdy has survived without some or most of the 49ers’ vaunted group of playmakers as he has morphed into a downfield passer; Anthony Richardson is the only quarterback who has more average air yards per throw (12.3) than Purdy (9.3) this season. Purdy has thrown seven interceptions and lost two fumbles, though, and he doesn’t offer much as a scrambler, which means he has to outperform the guys who can run as a passer to earn MVP consideration, as he did last season.
0:43
Patrick Mahomes eager to test sore ankle
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes details dealing with his ankle injury this week ahead of a matchup vs. the Broncos.
Jalen Hurts has the league’s best completion percentage over expectation, and that’s while being without all three of his top receivers for stretches. He has also produced eight rushing touchdowns while fixing his issues against the blitz, where he has the league’s best QBR so far. The tush push hasn’t been quite as effective this season, though, and Hurts has taken sacks at a high clip. He turned the ball over seven times in Philly’s first four games; with him protecting the ball over the past four, the Eagles have won every game. More of that in the second half and Hurts will be in the running.
Kyler Murray is playing what might be the best football of his career. He’s all the way up to fifth in QBR while keeping his sacks and turnovers at manageable rates. His success rate as a passer is up to a career-high 51.5%, and he has added 350 rushing yards and two scores on the ground. Those throws just don’t often produce huge gains, though, as Murray’s 7.1 yards per attempt ranks 21st. The Cardinals quarterback has completed just one pass that traveled 30 yards or more in the air all season, which is as many as Jake Haener.
The final five are in a tier of their own. I had to start by eliminating Joe Burrow, which was tough given that he’s coming off a five-touchdown day and ranks second with a 76.3 QBR. He’s not often a runner, but he did help the Bengals land a win over the Giants with a 47-yard scamper. My only issue with Burrow’s performance has been some concerns with consistency; he had three anonymous games as a passer in the win over the Giants and losses to the Patriots and Eagles.
Then, even more painfully, I had to let Josh Allen go. The Allen we’ve seen this season has been painstakingly methodical and careful in picking teams apart, much in line with what we saw from him for most of last season’s playoff game against the Chiefs. With a makeshift receiving corps, he has been responsible for 20 touchdowns between the air and ground while turning the ball over just four times. And as always, he has delivered some of the most impressive passes we’ve seen from any quarterback.
And yet, Allen’s passing numbers are closer to good than great. His 64% completion percentage ranks 23rd, which is fine for a passer throwing lots of deep shots, but his average pass is traveling 7.1 yards in the air, which is also 23rd. Plus, 35.5% of Allen’s pass attempts have produced first downs, which is fine, but the three guys ahead of him all rank in the top three by the same measure. He gets bonus points for never taking sacks and perennially finding ways to pick up first downs with his legs, but I was comfortable placing him in fourth.
Goff is a difficult player to evaluate in relation to the other quarterbacks in this range. He ranks 14th in QBR, which I’m sure will enrage Lions fans. It owes to a few weaknesses in his game. He has taken sacks on nearly 8% of his dropbacks, which is suboptimal behind one of the league’s best offensive lines. He had two subpar games to start the season that the computer remembers more than we do. Take them out and he jumps to fifth in QBR since Week 3.
Goff is also basically immobile, having run 18 times for 16 yards this season. As such, he needs to be a much better passer than his contemporaries, who can almost all generate at least some value with their legs. To my eyes, he’s certainly doing that. Since Week 3, he’s completing a staggering 82.8% of his passes and averaging 10.3 yards per attempt, and has thrown 13 touchdown passes against one interception.
For two months, Goff has basically been Drew Brees 2.0. You might remember the debate about air yards as Brees fell back to earth and whether they matter. Goff’s performance is an example of when they don’t. His average pass is traveling 6.5 yards in the air, which ranks 31st. He’s also averaging 8.7 passing yards per attempt and turning just under 42% of his pass attempts into first downs, both of which rank second behind the guy atop our MVP rankings. When a quarterback is moving the chains this frequently, air yards don’t matter.
ESPN has a new metric called precision pass rate, which measures how often quarterbacks hit their receivers in stride and in range of their torso. The league average since Week 3 is 53.6%. The second-placed quarterback by this metric, Jalen Hurts, is at 62.9%. Goff is at 75.8%. That’s an unreal level of accuracy. He’s hitting every pass catcher in the hands.
I’ve been impressed with the ways Goff has subverted our expectations and concerns, too. Facing the league’s best pressure packages in Minnesota last month, the same Goff who routinely melted down against pressure in previous years went 10-of-11 for 164 yards and two touchdowns. Last week, in horrible rain in Green Bay, Goff completed his first 11 passes and went 18-of-22 for 145 yards with a score. That’s impressive for a guy whose hand size is supposed to be a hindrance in bad weather outdoors.
Goff would be a reasonable MVP pick most seasons. The 2016 No. 1 pick is just unfortunate to find himself in a year in which there are two quarterbacks who can compare to his passing performance and who can make a difference as runners.
I covered Daniels’s incredible first half-season as a pro in the Offensive Rookie of the Year section. Missing close to a full game against the Panthers prevented him from racking up numbers against the league’s worst defense, which could be enough to cost him the MVP award if things continue as they are. His matchup with the Steelers this weekend will be a statement game if he can flummox one of the NFL’s best defenses.
There’s no way I can pick anybody for this award at the halfway point than the reigning MVP. Remember how I said Goff was on an incredible streak of play since Week 3? Well, over that same time frame, Jackson is also averaging 10.3 yards per attempt, but he has thrown 18 touchdown passes against one interception. Oh, and he has added 338 rushing yards and two more scores over that stretch.
Forget what Jackson does as a runner. It doesn’t even need to be mentioned to justify picking him as league MVP. He leads the league in passing yards per attempt (9.3), adjusted net yards per attempt (9.7) and touchdown-to-interception ratio (20-to-2), all while his receivers are dropping passes at the seventh-highest rate. He’s doing this while throwing 35% of his targets to Rashod Bateman, Nelson Agholor and Justice Hill, and with three new starters along the offensive line.
As a passer, Jackson is turning 44.7% of his pass attempts into first downs this season. That is extremely rarified air. Since 2000, the only guys to top that while starting each of their team’s first nine games are Tom Brady in 2007, Peyton Manning in 2013, Goff in 2018, Manning again in 2004 and Matt Ryan in 2016. Four of those five guys won MVP, and the seasons by Brady and Manning come up regularly when discussing the best years ever produced by a quarterback, full stop.
Jackson has complete and utter control of this offense, and other teams have been hopeless in trying to stop things. He has always been able to extend plays, of course, but his footwork when he resets to throw outside of the pocket has gone from being inconsistent to reliably consistent and on point. Arm strength has never been a problem for Jackson inside the pocket — he has been better from there than most people believe during his career — but he’s inarguably great as a pure passer at this point.
Consider what happened last week against the Broncos, who came into Baltimore as one of the league’s best pass defenses. Denver took Jackson out of the run game, and he produced a total of three carries for 4 yards on the ground. Instead, he sliced up coordinator Vance Joseph’s defense through the air, going 16-of-19 for 280 yards with three touchdowns. The incompletions were two drops and a pass in which he received a bad snap from his center. His 97.2 QBR was the third-best performance in a single game by any quarterback this season, narrowly topping the 96.6 QBR he posted in the Week 3 victory over the Cowboys.
The idea that defenses could eliminate Jackson by making him a one-dimensional passer needs to be thrown into the garbage. NFL Next Gen Stats estimates the probability on any given play that an offense will pass. In the situations in which the model projected a pass probability of 75% or higher, Jackson has gone 81-of-131 for 1,093 yards with 11 touchdowns and one pick. His 0.28 EPA per dropback on those snaps leads the league.
And if awards voters do want to consider Jackson’s running, his 505 rushing yards lead all quarterbacks and rank 17th among all players this season. His EPA is below average, which hints at the only flaw we’ve seen from him so far: He has lost three fumbles. One came on a strip-sack, another on a fumble as a runner and a third on a backward pass to Zay Flowers that the second-year wideout wasn’t able to bring in.
Jackson is still incredibly efficient as a runner and scrambler; one of my favorite plays this year was when the Buccaneers blew up a fourth-quarter screen attempt on second-and-long. Jackson just shrugged and ran out the backside of the play for a 17-yard gain. He has always been a wizard at avoiding big hits and getting out of bounds, and while offensive coordinator Todd Monken doesn’t use him quite as often in the designed run game, the threat of him keeping the ball visibly opens up run lanes for Henry.
There’s understandably voter fatigue with former MVPs, especially when they’ve won the award the prior season. The new thing is always fun. Daniels having a realistic case to be the first rookie since Jim Brown to win league MVP is an incredibly compelling story. If the cases are close, I’d imagine voters will lean toward somebody new.
The case isn’t close, though. Jackson is playing significantly better than he did a year ago, when he was one vote away from being the unanimous MVP. He has been the best passer in football and added a top-20 rushing season as a side quest. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how impressive he has been. It’s not hyperbole to say he’s playing quarterback as well as anybody in league history.
My pick after Week 4: Daniels