Saquon Barkley is having a legendary season, but he won’t win the award.
At this point in the NFL season, it’s difficult to imagine anyone catching Josh Allen in the race for MVP. Now the runaway favorite for the award, Allen has remained as effective as ever while former frontrunner Lamar Jackson has fallen by the wayside during the Ravens last three games, two of which were losses.
Allen has been fantastic in spite of a down passing year around the league, of that there’s no debate. On pace for 3,812 passing yards, 28 touchdowns and just 7 interceptions, Allen has also been a force on the ground — where he’s on pace to finish with 473 rushing yards and another 9 touchdowns. It’s impossible to imagine the Bills being same team without Allen under center, which has been the longstanding argument for conflating “Most Valuable Player” with “Best Quarterback.”
While Allen has been fantastic, it’s also wild to consider that he’s such a strong favorite to take home honors when this hasn’t been his best individual season in the NFL, and he’s far from the top quarterback in the league this season. In fact, when compared to his peers at the position Allen doesn’t really have a resume that leaps off the page and screams “MVP.”
- 14th in passing yards
- 20th in completion percentage
- 6th in passing touchdowns
- 5th in fewest interceptions thrown
- 14th in yards-per-attempt
- 10th in passer rating
What Allen does have going for him is total consistency in all areas. This has been a season where up-and-down quarterback play has been the norm, but Allen’s game has neither benefited from extreme high points this year, or been hindered by lows. Instead he’s just playing solid football against every single opponent in the league, and it’s helped that he’s on one of the best teams in the NFL.
It’s definitely difficult to make a strong argument for any quarterback in the NFL to win the award other than Josh Allen this season. Lamar Jackson has been amazing, but largely padded his stats against terrible opponents. Jared Goff is the king of efficiency, but he’s thrown nine interceptions, which hurts his resume. Joe Burrow is having a career year, but the Bengals are so abysmal it’s impossible to put him in consideration.
If this award was for “Best Quarterback” there’s no doubt Allen would win and deserve the award. The problem is that in a just world MVP should be going to Saquon Barkley of the Philadelphia Eagles, just as it should have gone to Christian McCaffrey a year ago.
A core issue with the concept of MVP right now is that by nature “valuable” is always going to apply to a quarterback more than any other position. You would be hard pressed to find any playoff team that could simply lose its signal caller, while maintaining the same level of production and success. That said, it’s also locked in old thinking where quarterback is the most important position on the field by a massive margin — and that hurts someone like Barkley, who has without a doubt been the most important player not just on the Eagles, but in the NFL this season.
Saquon Barkley won’t win NFL MVP, but he deserves the award
While Allen will win the award with fairly middling numbers, Barkley is having one of the best running back seasons in history. Sitting at 1,499 yards, the Eagles’ back is on track to finish 2024 with 2,123 rushing yards — which would be the most by a back since Derrick Henry in 2020, and break Eric Dickerson’s record of 2,105 yards, set back in 1984. Considering that Barkley has a final five-game stretch against teams who have been horrific against the run this season.
- Panthers: 32nd
- Steelers: 4th
- Commanders: 27th
- Cowboys: 31st
- Giants: 29th
Considering Barkley is averaging 6.1 yards-per-carry it’s easy to see him surpassing Dickerson’s mark, and there’s even an outside chance he could break the 2,200 yard mark for the first time in NFL history.
When it comes to establishing “value” it’s difficult to imagine any player in the league being more important, or transformative to their organization that Saquon Barkley. He’s single-handedly taken the Eagles from a lost team that appeared to be destined to fire Nick Sirianni, to now being 10-2 and a legitimate Super Bowl theat. Meanwhile the argument for Josh Allen is solid, but it’s largely based off “more of the same” from the Bills’ quarterback.
This is not a unique argument to Allen vs. Barkley. It’s the exact same argument as to why Christian McCaffrey should have been the MVP last year. In 2024 we’ve seen what happened to the San Francisco 49ers without their do-everything running back, and it transformed them from one of the best teams in the NFC, so last place in the NFC West.
What makes this so tricky is that MVP isn’t, nor should it be a “body of work” award — but Allen has come so close to winning in the past that this feels a bit like it will be making good on a stellar career thus far. Allen has had his best seasons get overshadowed by a breakout, career-defining year from another player. In 2020 his 4,500 yard, 37 TD season was washed out by Aaron Rodgers throwing 48 TDs and only 5 INTs. In 2022 he lost out to Patrick Mahomes on a career year. Part of this is a testament to Allen’s consistency, but that also his downfall when it comes to individual awards like this — because he is just a year in, year out top-5 QB, which makes him less prone to have these eye-opening seasons that garner all the attention.
Ultimately, we need a new award. We need to find a way to separate out MVP and Offensive Player of the Year so it’s not simply quarterbacks always winning MVP, with the best non-quarterback winning OPOY. In a just world we’d have Barkley win the MVP in 2024, Allen be named Quarterback of the Year, and then OPOY being opened up so someone like Joe Burrow can get recognized outside of his team’s defensive struggles.
That won’t happen in 2024 though. Josh Allen will win the MVP, but it’s simply wrong to have a legendary running back season get overshadowed by a solid, but unremarkable QB year.
