The NFL MVP race is heating up, and Patrick Mahomes is once again one of the favorites to take home the hardware. Through nine weeks of action, the quarterback currently has the second-best odds at MVP, trailing only Josh Allen. While Allen is having a great season in his own right, the stats make it obvious that Patrick Mahomes should be the MVP frontrunner.
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Five Stats That Show Why Patrick Mahomes Should Win MVP
1. 0.365
At its core, the job of every quarterback is to efficiently move the ball down the field, and nobody does that better than Patrick Mahomes. As of this posting, the quarterback currently averages 0.365 Expected Points Added per Play, or EPA/play for short. This is the second-best mark in the league, trailing only Tua Tagovailoa of the Miami Dolphins (0.371 EPA/play).
While traditional football analysts aren’t the biggest fans of EPA/play, there is no denying the strong correlation between EPA/play and the MVP award. Since 2016, every single quarterback that led the league in EPA/play and started every game earned the regular season’s highest honors. Cam Newton was the last quarterback to win MVP without leading the league in EPA/play, but that was largely because he somehow found a way to lead Carolina to a 15-1 record with Tedd Ginn as his leading receiver.
2. 87.4
EPA/play measures offensive efficiency, and the quarterback is obviously the largest part of the success of any passing play. However, the statistic does not completely separate quarterback play from the overall play result. To do that, we have to look at Pro Football Focus’ film-based player grades. Fortunately, this metric also confirms that Mahomes is among the best passers in the game.
Through nine weeks, Mahomes’ 87.4 PFF grade is the fourth-best mark in the league, and he’s very close to Josh Allen’s league-leading 90.5 grade. Last year was a relatively down year for the quarterback, and that was reflected in his 80.1 PFF grade. Now, Mahomes is back to his old self, as both the film and advanced stats say he’s playing like an MVP.
3. 109.5
If you don’t like the advanced stats, then you should find comfort in the fact that Mahomes is also crushing the traditional metrics of quarterback play. Right now, Mahomes’ 109.5 passer rating is second in the league only to Tagovailoa, which shows that the quarterback is doing a phenomenal job of making big plays while keeping the ball out of harm’s way.
4. 20
Efficiency is great, but in order to truly be elite, you need to maintain that efficiency while operating a high-volume passing attack. Fortunately, Mahomes has been able to do just that, as he currently leads the league with 20 touchdown passes and a 7.6% touchdown rate. Mixing this elite combination of volume and efficiency is exactly what valuable players do, and nobody does it better than Mahomes. The last time Mahomes led the league in touchdowns and touchdown percentage was in 2018, and history could be repeating itself with another MVP season.
5. 961
Ever since he took over for Alex Smith in 2018, Patrick Mahomes has had the best supporting cast in football with Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce. Or, at least he did before the start of the 2022 season. Tyreek Hill and his league-leading 961 receiving yards are now in Miami, as he proved once and for all that he was much more than just a product of a great coach and quarterback.
Mahomes, meanwhile, has proven beyond a doubt that he is more than just the product of Tyreek Hill. The quarterback is in the midst of one of the best seasons of his career, and he’s doing it with a collection of unremarkable receivers. Travis Kelce is still great and Andy Reid is still a genius, but it’s clear that this offense would not be the unstoppable force that it is without Patrick Mahomes running the ship.
