No individual award in the NFL is more prestigious than MVP.
As we hit December, it appears to be a two-horse race between the Patriots' Drake Maye and the Rams' Matthew Stafford. Stafford was the odds-on favorite before the shocking upset loss to the Panthers on Sunday; Maye has become the odds-on leader after a big Monday night win.
It's not the strongest MVP field, but with usual stalwarts — like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson — not as involved in the race as usual, and non-QB candidates like Jonathan Taylor and Jaxon Smith-Njigba fading of late, it's easy to assume the race is already down to two.
Assumptions can be dangerous, though, and five weeks is a lot of football, especially in the most important games of the season.
I'm not convinced the race is truly down to just Stafford and Maye. Both candidates look vulnerable, and neither is as far ahead of the crowd as an odds-on favorite would normally be at this point in the season.
That implies value on the right long shot — and the right MVP long shot right now is Jordan Love at +1900 (DraftKings).
Let's start with why Maye and Stafford could be vulnerable.
MVP is a team award as much as an individual one — we give MVP over and over again to a quarterback on a top-two seed.
Maye is the rightful favorite, and he would get my vote if the season ended today. The Patriots are 11-2, cruising through a soft schedule, and Maye is certainly at the heart of their success. New England isn't great running the football or stopping the pass, but Maye has sliced up opposing secondaries with the deep ball all season.
Right now, Maye is the NFL leader in both passing yards and completion percentage, and he's also the leader in total EPA. Do all that on a 13- or 14-win one-seed in a weak MVP field, and you're probably going to win MVP.
But Maye's traditional stats are pretty underwhelming. He's on pace for around 4,500 yards but just 30 passing TDs and eight interceptions, with roughly 400 yards and three scores on the ground. That's a good season, but far short of MVP standards in almost any other year.
Maye has only one good win on his résumé, in Buffalo earlier this season. After the bye week, he'll face the Bills again and then the Ravens on the road, and he'll do so as the MVP favorite, a spot where his stock can really only go down with a misstep.
Lose to the Bills and suddenly the division is back in play. If the Patriots lose to the Ravens too, that's a death blow for his MVP stock.
As for Stafford, the sky is not falling after a relatively fluky loss to the Panthers in which the Rams thoroughly dominated the game, including a 61% to 39% Success Rate advantage. Los Angeles averaged 7.4 yards per play and only even got to third down five times all day.
So why did the Rams lose?
Bryce Young hit a couple of huge throws on fourth down, but mostly, Stafford straight up cost them the game. He had a tipped interception in the end zone on his second drive, then threw a pick-six on his next possession, and he was stripped for a lost fumble on his final play to end the game. Those three plays cost the Rams 18 EPA in a field-goal loss.
That loss is on Stafford, and it's why his MVP odds dropped from around 55% before the weekend to 45% after.
It also dropped the Rams to 9-3 in the very tight NFC, out of the one-seed for now and into a tie with the Seahawks. L.A. has two tricky matchups left against Arizona — a team that's been competitive in almost every game — and also plays the Lions and Seahawks in a five-day stretch in December.
If the Rams lose two of those games and the one-seed is gone, so is Stafford's MVP. Lose to both Detroit and Seattle in under a week, and it’s definitely gone.
Stafford's bad game came early enough for him to recover, but the margin is thin now — both for him and for the Rams. Stafford doesn't measure up in the usual advanced metrics, sitting outside the top five in key indicators like EPA and CPOE, and the Rams are roughly a coin flip to win the NFC West. That means a coin flip to finish as the five-seed or lower … and likely out of the MVP race.
MVP overwhelmingly goes to a quarterback on a top-two seed. And this year, that isn't leaving us many options.
The Broncos are now the NFL's most likely top-two seed (per FTN) at 79%. They don't have an MVP candidate.
The Patriots are next at 76%, which is why Maye is the MVP favorite. There's a strong chance those are our top two AFC seeds — and if not, it's not like Trevor Lawrence or Daniel Jones are getting into the MVP mix. Maye is the only realistic MVP in the AFC.
One of the top two seeds in the NFC will likely come from the NFC West. That's why Stafford is the second favorite. But the Rams are only 52% at FTN to win the division, meaning a 48% chance of finishing as the five-seed or lower and likely out of the MVP race. If they fall, the Seahawks or 49ers would claim that spot instead, and neither is likely to produce a strong MVP candidate.
So that’s three of the four top-two seeds accounted for — and only Maye or possibly Stafford as MVP candidates — which explains why the odds look the way they do today.
And that all brings us back to Jordan Love, because the Packers are the most likely candidate for that final top-two seed right now — roughly a coin flip to land it and the third-most likely team in the league.
Remember, this is a team award.
The Packers just got their biggest win of the season in a game the entire nation watched on Thanksgiving, and Love was terrific, throwing four touchdowns against the Lions.
Green Bay ranks fifth in DVOA and top seven on both offense and defense. The Packers are well coached, run the ball, are getting healthy on offense, and have a superstar on defense in Micah Parsons.
Green Bay also plays four high-leverage games in December: Chicago, at Denver, at Chicago, and Baltimore, before an easy one against the Vikings in Week 18. Those are big spots everyone will be watching, three of them in national-TV windows, and they offer huge opportunities for an MVP moment.
Love will have the chance to beat the one-seed in both conferences on back-to-back weeks with the Bears and Broncos up next. He'll also have a shot to deliver a death blow to the Ravens' playoff chances in Week 17. These are showcase "Heisman" games for Love and the Packers.
Right now, Love ranks 10th in passing yards and seventh in touchdowns. He didn't score a single touchdown in three of his last five games, and he had ugly losses against the Browns and Panthers.
But the underlying numbers love him.
Love leads the NFL in EPA per play by a good margin, and he's second in EPA + CPOE. Over the last 12 years, 10 MVPs finished top-two in EPA, and eight of them (67%) finished No. 1.
Those advanced metrics have been kingmakers, and if Love's counting stats catch up a bit as Toyotathon hits full speed in these big games everyone will be watching, he'll have as good a statistical case as anyone in a year where no one's stats stand out. Love also rarely makes big mistakes, with only three interceptions on the season — that's another number in his favor.
If the Packers win out, they're 74% likely to get the NFC one-seed, per The Athletic. If they go 4-1, they're still about three-fourths likely to be a top-two seed in the NFC.
That's enough to get Love into the MVP mix down the stretch, and it's enough to wonder why his odds are significantly longer than Stafford's, whose team has a lower chance to finish as high in the seeding as Green Bay.
The 2025 MVP race still has five more Sunday chapters to be written.
Maye is the rightful favorite — but not a runaway candidate. Stafford is strongly in the mix, and we're sitting on a +5000 long shot June ticket on him we'll be happy to cash.
If the Packers are 50% likely to be a top-two seed and Love is the current EPA per play leader, he simply should not be +1900 — implied 5% — to win MVP.
There's not much buzz for Love's MVP chances just yet, but we want the ticket that's valuable in February, not December.
Grab Love +1900 to win MVP at DraftKings, and let's see what Love and the Packers do to close out a topsy-turvy season.
