The NFL MVP has long been a quarterback's award. No non-QB has won it since Adrian Peterson back in 2012. There have been just four instances in the 2000s of that occurring: Peterson, LaDainian Tomlinson in 2006, Shaun Alexander in 2005 and Marshall Faulk in 2000.
The sport has only grown more pass happy in the dozen years since Peterson brought the hardware to Minnesota. Quarterbacks' numbers are gaudier. Both media debates and fan conversations revolve around QB play. It's the most important position in all of sports and, really, it's usually quite difficult to ever make the case for someone other than a guy who touches the ball on every single play to win the league's most prestigious regular season award. It takes a perfect confluence of factors to get to that point where someone other than a signal-caller could win it.
The 2024 NFL season might just be that recipe for someone else winning though, someone like Saquon Barkley.
There's always talk of "Heisman moments" in the college game, the times where a player captures the nation's imagination on the biggest of stages to tilt the awards conversation in their favor. Sunday night's Eagles win over the Rams out West just might be that for Barkley, as this 72-yard touchdown run capped off the victory:
Saquon Barkley has set an Eagles single-game rushing record AND career-high with 255 yards‼️@saquon | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/8spJ32UbFz
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) November 25, 2024
Barkley ran for 255 yards against Los Angeles, a single-game franchise record and the highest figure of his superstar career. It's the ninth-highest rushing performance in league history and the most since Kansas City's Jamal Charles put up 259 during the 2009 season. Barkley's 302 total yards from scrimmage are the 10th most in a game ever. This was unquestionably one of the greatest performances the sport's seen and Barkley did so in primetime as the Eagles pulled off their seventh consecutive victory with true Super Bowl momentum.
Barkley now leads the NFL in rushing yards, yards per carry, yards per game and total scrimmage yards. That's all great, but does it equate to actually winning MVP?
Past running backs who've won the award typically achieved some historic feat or came quite close to doing so. In 2012, Peterson rushed for 2,097 yards, just nine yards shy of the single-season record. At the time, it was just the seventh time a player crossing the 2,000 rushing yards plateau. Tomlinson won with San Diego in 2006 after breaking the league's touchdown record with 31 on the year. Alexander won in 2005 also by setting what was then the touchdown record. Faulk with St. Louis in 2000? You guessed it, he hit the touchdown record mark.
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Barkley isn't hitting a touchdown record in a Tush Push-centric offense, but what about some yardage records? Barkley currently has 1,392 rushing yards while averaging 126.5 yards per game. Over the course of a 17-game season, that would be 2,151 yards, the most ever. He has 1,649 yards from scrimmage on 149.9 total yards per game. Similarly, over a full modern season, that would come out to 2,548 scrimmage yards, again, the most ever.
Statistically, it would be the best running back season ever. Diving into hyperbole is foolish, but that has gotten thrown out the window watching Barkley up close week in, week out this season.
There needs to be more though. It can't be simply because of the running back's accolades. The stars truly need to align.
The default is to give the award to a quarterback. That's more than understandable. Which QB really deserves it this season? No one is having an all-time great year in their own right that's dominating the discourse.
The odds-on favorite at the moment is Buffalo's Josh Allen. The Bills are 9-2 and last week took down Kansas City and Patrick Mahomes, who's having a down year by his inner circle Hall of Fame standards. Allen's thrown for 18 touchdowns against just five interceptions while rushing for five more. He's never won the award previously and Buffalo has a chance of stealing away the No. 1 seed in the AFC from Mahomes, Andy Reid and the Fightin' Swifties.
Lamar Jackson leads the league in touchdown rate and yards per pass, but would voter fatigue set in given that Jackson just won last year and it would be the third award already of his career? Team success weighs on the voter base as well. Baltimore will almost certainly reach the postseason, but they might not win their division. He currently has the second-shortest odds to win MVP.
Neither of those guys' seasons scream, "Give me the MVP or else!"
My gut says that Jackson throws for 30-plus TDs and rushes for 800-900 yards while the Ravens win 10-or-so games and he wins for the third time, but if Barkley can legitimately break these records, not come close, but break fully, the voting base needs to reckon with the fact that the person who defined the 2024 regular season will not have been a quarterback.
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