What is “value”?

I rarely write about sport on this site anymore, but I’m going to broach the topic here just for a few minutes because there’s an interesting debate raging across social media right now regarding the NFL MVP award, and which players are worthy. As of this writing, there are four players I see mentioned most frequently. The two that I think aren’t likely to win it are Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. The debate is really swirling around the other two guys: Bills and Ravens quarterbacks Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson.

I’m not going to actually lay out the case for either player here. As a Buffalonian and someone who roots for the Bills, I openly admit that yes, I think it’s perfectly clear that Josh Allen is the MVP this year. It’s obvious, you weirdos! Just give it to him already. It’s a done deal. It’s in the bag.

But…is it?

Obviously, not really. Lamar Jackson is having an amazing statistical season; in fact, if you were to only look at the numbers, Jackson is obviously the MVP. It’s a done deal. It’s in the bag.

Only, it’s not.

The problem is with the nature of the MVP award itself. It’s an award that’s voted on by a number of sports journalists, and like all such things, it’s a weird blend of stats and narrative. Some years the stats win out, sometimes it’s the narrative that wins out. Sometimes the MVP is given to the player who obviously had the best statistical season, while others it’s a vaguer justification–the best player on the best team, perhaps. That last is one of the bigger reasons for supporting Allen over Jackson this year: as of this writing the Bills have the better record, having already won their division and being on the brink of clinching the Number Two seed in the AFC playoffs, while Jackson’s Ravens have lost more games and may not even end up winning their division (though that looks likely at this point).

It’s the word in the award itself: the most valuable player. And that makes the whole thing a judgment call, basically an opinion. Is Lamar Jackson more valuable to his team than Josh Allen? I don’t know that he is. I also don’t know–really know–that he isn’t. So what we end up with is conflicting opinions, and let’s be honest here: those opinions can shift and change depending on who it is we’re rooting for. (Right now we’re not even going to mention the fact that NFL MVP is now a de facto award for quarterbacks alone; it’s been 12 years since anyone other than a QB won it, and it’s been 38 years since anybody on the defensive side of things won one. And in a pass-whacky league, a wide receiver has never won it.)

Here’s a thought experiment: consider all the argument for Josh Allen for MVP, and all the arguments for Lamar Jackson as well. Now imagine if these two guys were having the exact same seasons–but they played on the opposite teams. Imagine Allen leading the Ravens to a 12-3 record (again, as of this writing), having set all manner of offensive records over his first bunch of years, and the stunning individual performances he’s had in single games this season. And imagine Lamar Jackson playing for the Bills, and putting up the passing numbers he’s put up this year.

If that happened, you would see each camp still advocating strongly for their guy–but with the exact opposite set of arguments.

I do tend to react strongly against purely statistical justifications for MVP awards. I’m not a fan of reducing everything to stats, because I’m a storyteller and a story-lover at heart, and stats aren’t stories. Stats can be a part of stories, but they’re not the whole thing. Josh Allen’s story in Buffalo is amazing and compelling, and when one considers the degree to which he’s played a role in the resurgence of a franchise and the emotions of a fandom (we can talk another time about how maybe a football team’s fortunes in the field probably shouldn’t be this big of a factor in a region’s emotional life), and the role he has come to inhabit in this community, it’s hard to make a case that he’s not incredibly valuable. And most people agree on this point. So is he the most valuable? Maybe, maybe not.

The NFL MVP award turns out, in some ways, to be similar to the Oscars: it’s all about aesthetics and recognition, as opposed to rewarding a true “objective” standout. It’s clear that even with the statistical arguments, there’s no real “objective” standard of a player’s value, so again it’s the narrative that comes in to play. That also happens with the Oscars, where sometimes an actor is awarded an Academy Award less for the particular role for which they’re nominated but as a nod of respect to a career. For Josh Allen, the narrative case is strengthened when various aspects of his career are noted: the degree to which he has been responsible for the Bills winning a lot, the fact that the Bills have enjoyed an even better season this year after an offseason that left many thinking the Bills would take a step back, the further fact that Allen has significantly improved the major aspect of his game that was often criticized before this year (his turnovers).

The other problem with stats is that if a player with gaudy stats is truly the most valuable, then surely it should show up in the win-loss column. One standout weird example of this is from Major League Baseball, which in 1987 awarded National League MVP to Andre Dawson, because he had an outstanding season at the plate (49 HRs). Never mind that his team that year, the Cubs, finished dead last. Was Dawson “valuable”? Well, I’ve seen that debated here and there over the years. The NFL does have ways of avoiding this sort of thing, with its additional awards of “Offensive Player of the Year” and “Defensive Player of the Year”. MVP, then, becomes something else. Something more elusive, dealing with those pesky “intangibles”.

So, what’s my solution? Obviously, I’m a Josh Allen guy. However, there is precedent for doing something more daring: in 2003, the NFL MVP was split, and we had co-MVPs in Peyton Manning and Steve McNair. If that happened again, it would not bother me at all. (Nor, really, would Lamar Jackson winning MVP outright.) Another thing that’s always struck me as odd is why the NFL’s awards are singular. Baseball has multiple sets of awards for each league, so there is no one Baseball MVP; there’s a NL MVP and an AL MVP. Why not a AFC and an NFC MVP? (This wouldn’t help the current situation, obviously, since Allen and Jackson are both AFC guys.)

But ultimately, aside from my thinking there should be awards from both conferences, I don’t much have a problem with any of this. It gets people talking about sport and it shows the passion in the fanbases. More than anything, all these MVP candidates show what a glorious period of football this is, and how much it’s an embarrassment of riches right now. Unfortunately not many people are taking it this way, and that’s a shame. Rooting for Josh Allen surely doesn’t have to mean that I can’t appreciate the amazing football that Lamar Jackson is playing right now.

One last point: sooner or later in all of these discussions one point inevitably gets made: “Neither Allen nor Jackson has ‘won anything’ yet.” This refers to the fact that neither guy has won the Super Bowl (or even been to it) yet. And yes, that does suck. One thing I dislike about the NFL is that for whatever reason, it’s much more conducive to dynasties forming, and this is compounded by the weird way that sports fans (and some commentators) overvalue championships above all else. This is natural, I suppose–winning the Super Bowl is everybody’s goal–but I have a problem with looking at someone’s career as “lesser” if they simply never managed to win it. There’s only one Super Bowl every year, after all, and many fine careers play out in the NFL (or in any sport) that don’t include a championship. Every time I see the “Allen doesn’t have a ring!” thing on social media, I like to respond along these lines: “I have bad news for you if you ever visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame, because I’ll bet most of the guys in there never won a Super Bowl.”

So much of sport is narrative, as much as the folks who love stats would pretend otherwise. Look at Aaron Rodgers and the narrative over the course of his career. Of course, right now the narrative on Rodgers is pretty much that he’s a washed-up weirdo who is going to leave the Jets on the verge of a full-on rebuild, but for years, his story was that he’d have a great regular season, lead the Packers to one of the best records in the NFC, and then faceplant in the playoffs. Year in and year out, that’s what happened…and if any other player had that kind of record, our sporting world would label him a “choker”, fairly or not. So why was Rodgers never labeled a “choker” at all? Because one time, early in his career, he actually won a Super Bowl.

Winning a championship completely changes the narrative of a player and a coach. Win one, and all previous “failures” (and again, it’s a hell of a thing to view all sporting effort that doesn’t produce a championship a “failure”) are forgiven and forgotten. Win one early in your career, and nothing that happens after will ever diminish your sheen: you are a Champion forevermore. Rodgers illustrates the latter, and the former is illustrated perfectly by Chiefs coach Andy Reid. Reid coached the Philadelphia Eagles in the late 90s and the 2000s, and he took them to multiple NFC Championship games (losing all but one) and to one Super Bowl (which he lost). Until Reid won his first Super Bowl with the Chiefs, he was the most recent poster child for the “He can’t win the big one! He coaches small in big moments! He can’t manage a game! He can’t get the team ready to win a Super Bowl!” crowd. But all those years of falling short still happened! They’re right there in his record! But he won a Super Bowl finally (along with, as of this writing, two more), so all of that is forgotten and ignored.

Ultimately, the NFL MVP is a shifting blend of narrative and statistical excellence. This season, there’s enough of both to go around for multiple players, so much so that the award will honestly feel partially incorrect, no matter to whom it’s given in the end.

Unless it’s Josh Allen. If that happens, everything is right in the world.