CINCINNATI — Joe Burrow is one of the top candidates to win his first MVP award this fall and Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer is picking him to take it home.
Burrow finished fourth in MVP voting last year while taking home the Comeback Player of the Year Award for the second time.
"The wild thing is that he could have won it last year, in a season when the Bengals didn’t even make the playoffs," Breer wrote. "He threw more yards (4,918) and touchdowns (43) than anyone else, and had the most throws (652) and completions (460), too, while maintaining the fourth-highest completion percentage (70.6%) in all of football. His passer rating of 108.5 was third. And he accomplished all that with the NFL’s 30th-ranked run game alongside him, and the league’s 25th-ranked defense playing opposite him—giving him a heavy burden week-to-week. That’s without even getting into Tee Higgins’s health, or Ja’Marr Chase’s contract standoff, which forced Cincinnati to integrate younger players at the receiver spots on the fly.
"Now, Josh Allen was richly deserving of MVP last year, in lifting the Bills in their first post–Stefon Diggs season. Similarly, Lamar Jackson was a very worthy runner-up. So I’m not saying there was some injustice done. But it’s common that a guy will have an MVP-worthy year, and then actually get the award the year after (Allen’s an example of it). And in the end, I do think the Bengals will wind up winning 12 or so games, after the offense had its healthiest offseason in years, which will make Burrow’s body of work pretty hard to overlook."
Burrow currently holds the third-best consensus betting odds to win MVP at +624 behind Jackson (+550) and Allen (+600).
Things are set up for him to have another MVP profile this fall if that defense can strengthen up a bit more.
