Odds are NFL MVP voters will get it wrong and not award Seahawks QB Sam Darnold

If you sort through the list of NFL passing yardage leaders, it takes a little while until you come across Sam Darnold’s name. There are a couple players ahead of him who produced sensational numbers with very good teams, and a couple who rang up stats while losing about as often as they won.

None of the four players who threw for more yards than Darnold, though, conquered the level of opposition he encountered while winning 82 percent of his games, earning the championship of the league’s most daunting division and establishing his team, the Seahawks, as the NFC’s No. 1 seed.

If you want a real challenge, try finding Darnold’s odds to win the NFL Most Valuable Player award at any online sports book. Matthew Stafford of the Rams and Drake Maye of the Patriots are close to even money, and Darnold is listed without about the same odds as Vegas might establish that I’ll someday write an Oscar-winning screenplay.

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Don't mind who the voters assigned to select the winners of the Associated Press and Pro Football Writers trophies pick. Darnold is your 2025 MVP.

He’s the guy who went into the most ominous neighborhood in the NFL and took over upon arrival. His Seahawks won the NFC North at 14-3, an improvement of three full games that took them from playoff spectator to Super Bowl favorite. That tied for the league’s best record numerically, but theirs was clearly the superior achievement with degree of difficulty as a factor.

So why isn’t Darnold the leading candidate?

Because his numbers aren’t as pretty.

And that’s where we are in sports now.

NFL MVP betting lines are current as of Monday at noon ET, provided by FanDuel Sportsbook.

In football, it’s got to be a quarterback, and that quarterback must own the most attractive statistical aggregation. And that’s not Darnold. He has thrown 14 interceptions, the most of any player not named Tua. He has fewer touchdowns than than the two favorites, and a lower passer rating.

If you need numbers, though, how about this: Darnold is the only quarterback to win at least 14 games in consecutive seasons with different franchises. It all depends on what numbers one values, and there are more that favor Darnold.

"Sam led us today," receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba told Seahawks.com following a season-defining victory over the 49ers late Saturday. "Sam was an absolute dog today. His demeanor, his approach. Everything about what he did today was great. Of course we want to fix some things, of course there's always going to be things to fix, but just from the time we got there yesterday, really the way we prepared, the way he prepared all week to make sure his guys were ready, it's one-of-one stuff. I'm super happy for him.

"That's our leader. We're going to follow our leader.”

If the MVP award is to be more directed toward statistical achievements, why not the Browns’ Myles Garrett? He set an NFL sacks record – let’s not call it “all-time”, because the NFL was almost 50 years old when the sack was adopted as an official category – with his 23^rd of the season. OK, so the Browns only won five games. But are we to believe winning matters-- but not as much as how many picks one throws?

Stafford’s 4,707-yard total for the 2025 season ranked 47^th in league history. His 46 touchdowns tied Drew Brees’ 2011 mark at No. 7. In completing 65 percent of his throws Stafford ranked only 17^th – this season.

Maye at least can say his 72-percent completion rate is No. 5 in league history.

Of course, it does help to be throwing against so many of the worst defenses.

For all the Patriots achieved this year, flipping a 4-13 finish in 2024 to 14-3 and No. 2 seed in the AFC, they and Maye had a wonderfully forgiving schedule. Only four of their 17 games were played against teams that advanced to the postseason. They defeated only a single team that wound up with a winning record. It is hard to win 14 games in the NFL and have that be the case; you don’t get to line up the Citadel or Eastern Illinois for a November break in this league. But the Pats’ 14-3 mark was constructed almost entirely against sub-.500 clubs. Their opponents’ record was 113-176, a.391 winning percentage.

Consider what Darnold and the Seahawks faced in climbing to the top of the NFC West. Sure, it was nice to have the Cardinals around, but that also meant keeping company with the Rams and 49ers in the only division to produce three teams with double-digit wins. Seahawks opponents were 144-145. Eight of the team’s games were against playoff-pound opponents, twice as many as New England, and Darnold led them to six victories against winning teams.

Comparing Maye to Darnold is tough to do, because what was asked of them was not comparable.

The Rams faced a slightly more difficult schedule than the Seahawks: 152-134 with eight playoff teams, but Stafford went 4-4 against those teams as opposed to Darnold’s 6-2 in his most challenging games.

If the voters for the MVP award look at least a little deeper, maybe they’ll see what I’ve seen, what I’ve presented here.

There may have been more attractive seasons than Sam Darnold’s in his first season in Seattle, but none more valuable. The organizations that chose that specific word to define their most prominent annual award would do well to spend more time considering what it means.

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