Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Can a running back win the NFL MVP for the first time in more than a decade?
Christian McCaffrey has been responsible for two of the best single-season performances by a running back over the last five years. He was the third player in NFL history to total 1,000 or more receiving and rushing yards in a season with the Carolina Panthers in 2019. Then, last season with the San Francisco 49ers, he became the 23rd player to score at least 21 total touchdowns while rushing for a league-best and career-high 1,459 yards.
Both stellar seasons for McCaffrey combined for just one Offensive Player of the Year award and a third-place finish in MVP voting – both from his 2023 season. So what more would McCaffrey have to do to impress voters enough to become the first running back to win MVP in over a decade?
With 21 of the last 25 MVPs since the turn of the century won by quarterbacks, McCaffrey already faces a steep hill to climb, but in maybe a glimmer of hope, the four non-quarterbacks to win the award were running backs:
2012 Adrian Peterson
2006 LaDanian Tomlinson
2005 Shaun Alexander
2000 Marshall Faulk
Let’s call those four our baseline for what McCaffrey would need to do to win MVP, starting with Peterson. Not only did Peterson become the seventh player in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards, he accomplished the feat after tearing his ACL and MCL in December of the previous season. The 2,000-yard plateau has been reached just once since Peterson did it in 2012, with Derrick Henry becoming the eighth player to eclipse the mark.
While it’s a rare accomplishment, the 2,000-yard mark doesn’t guarantee an MVP to a running back, as it’s merely a coin-flip with only four of those players winning MVP:
2020 Henry
2012 Peterson – MVP
2006 Chris Johnson
2003 Jamal Lewis
1998 Terrell Davis – MVP
1997 Barry Sanders – MVP
1984 Eric Dickerson
1973 OJ Simpson – MVP
But before we even get to this coin toss of whether a CMC2K season would mean an MVP, we need to solve the logistics of getting McCaffrey to 2,000 yards.
In 2023, McCaffrey finished with 272 rushing attempts, the most he’s had since his 1,000/1,000 season in 2019, while averaging a career-high 5.4 yards per attempt. If McCaffrey wanted to eclipse the 2,000-yard mark at that average, it would take approximately 370 attempts, a 36% workload increase from last season. That’s a number only seen by two running backs since 2010 (Henry in 2020 and DeMarco Murray in 2014).
So it’s either make McCaffrey the sole feature of an offense that includes all the names we know when he’s already the main attraction of the offense or simply increase his efficiency to 7.4 yards per attempt with his 270 carries, a number that would break Jim Brown’s record of 6.4 yards per attempt with a minimum of 270 attempts.
The 2,000-yard mark might be a reach for McCaffrey, but he did score a league-high 21 total touchdowns last season. Maybe scoring the ball is McCaffrey’s best chance to win the first MVP of his career. That worked for the other three MVPs at running back this century.
When LaDanian Tomlinson won his MVP in 2006, he broke the record for most rushing touchdowns (28) and total touchdowns (31) in a season, which both stand today. Tomlinson broke both records just one year after Shaun Alexander won MVP in 2005, when he set both records with 28 total touchdowns and 27 rushing. Alexander broke Preist Holmes record of 27 total touchdowns, which Holmes set in 2003. (Sidebar: Holmes was robbed of MVP in 2003. He finished with 27 total touchdowns and more than 2,100 total yards but finished fifth in MVP voting.) Who’s total touchdown record did Holmes break? That would be 2000 MVP Marshall Faulk, who set the record at 26 total touchdowns as part of “The Greatest Show on Turf”.
The pattern is there. All McCaffrey will have to do is see an 11-touchdown increase from 2023 to 2024 to break a record that’s stood for nearly two decades to give himself his best chance to win MVP.
But that didn’t work for Holmes in 2003, so even that isn’t a guarantee. So, just to be sure, McCaffrey should rush for 2,000 yards while breaking Tomlinson’s touchdown record to 100% no doubt become the first running back to win MVP since Peterson in 2012. There’s the map for McCaffrey; all he has to do is follow it.
On second thought, it might be easier for him to become an elite quarterback.
