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Mack had already done it before Surtain grabbed him.

Just needed to not throw it 100 MPH from 5 feet away. Knox had plenty of space to put some touch on it. Even if Knox had sat down that was going to be a tough pass to handle.

Yeah he of course is no Derrick Henry as far as we're comparing Josh and Lamar's supporting casts but he was definitely one of the best RBs in the league this season. The receiving traits and explosiveness he showed in college were on full display this season and he's become much better at absorbing contact and staying on his feet than I ever imagined he would. Really lucky to have him as a weapon.

Yeah last year is the issue. Lamar and Josh are both extremely deserving this season. Last year, nobody was really deserving and it seemed to break voters' brains.

Could be because they actually did sell out to stop Lamar and Baltimore used that against them. For example, look at Henry's long TD run where several of Pittsburgh's defenders got caught out of position because they thought Lamar was keeping the ball and that allowed the gigantic hole for Henry to run through. It's kind of a both scenario. Teams naturally want to stack the box, not only because of Henry but also because of Lamar. Lamar's threat as a runner is the main reason Baltimore's rushing attack has been so dynamic every year, including this season when Henry went from people thinking he may be washed up in Tennessee to arguably the best RB in the league despite Saquon rushing for 2000 yards.

There's no good reason to believe this. The Ravens offense has historically fallen off a cliff any time Lamar has been out (scoring roughly half as many points per game) and Huntley's record with Baltimore in games he played significant snaps was 4-8. If you take Baltimore's 15 points per game average with Huntley as their guy, they would have won roughly 6 games. And that was 15 points a game with Justin Tucker being automatic as a kicker; Baltimore's defense/Tucker scored 47% of the team's points in Huntley's games vs. scoring 17% of the points this year. It's probably more likely that Baltimore would have been competing for the #1 overall pick without Lamar this year than winning 12 games IMO. Of course Buffalo would have been dramatically worse without Josh as well. Hard to say which team would have been worse without their QB since we fortunately haven't really had to play without Josh in a long time but I suspect we'd be terrible without him too.

Sometimes is selling it a bit short here. I hope to be surprised but it's literally happened once in the history of the league (twice if you count McNair, but first team All Pro QB Peyton also technically won that year). At any rate, I think the split ballot angle of people voting Lamar for All Pro and Josh for MVP isn't very likely. Maybe the more likely path for Josh is if Saquon syphons off enough of Lamar's votes to tip the MVP to Josh.

A friend and I were talking about which teams have a non QB as MVP and we were saying the correct answer is probably Watt or Hayward but we both thought for a moment about Boswell lol.

If you actually believe Mahomes played better in the regular season any of these 2 (likely 3) MVP seasons, then perhaps explaining it like you're a 5 year old was too ambitious.

Well you did say to explain it to you like you were 5 years old.

Lamar was better than Mahomes the two years he won MVP and was better than Mahomes this year. Mahomes won a couple MVPs when he was better and lost a couple to Rodgers (who also correctly has more MVPs than Mahomes). Montana played like 40 years ago so he and Lamar were not competing with each other for MVPs.

Might be a different EPA model (which is an annoying aspect of EPA lol). The one used for the betrayal index has Lamar 1, Josh 3, and Burrow 5 in EPA.

I'm with you for the most part and Josh would have gotten my vote, but the defense part isn't as simple as you think. Baltimore's defense locked in down the stretch and I think pretty much everyone would take theirs over ours now, but for the season overall, their defense got off to a horrendous start while ours was admittedly leaky but also generated a lot of turnovers, giving Josh the best starting field position in the entire league. As a result, Lamar ranks higher in the "QB Betrayal Index" which is basically comparing the QB's EPA to his defense's and special teams' EPA. Lamar ultimately ranked ahead of Josh in EPA while also having the worse defense and special teams. The only QB that was "betrayed" more than Lamar this season was unsurprisingly Burrow. Baltimore ultimately finished one game behind us and it's mostly because Lamar kept them afloat while the defense and special teams was hot garbage for most of the season. The average MVP this century has posted 0.27 EPA per game; in games where Lamar managed that feat this season, Baltimore is 11-0 and 0-5 when he failed to reach that level. Buffalo was 7-1 when Josh hit the MVP threshold and 6-2 when he did not. At the end of the day, we're really splitting hairs this year. Both QBs were amazing and you can make a very strong argument for both of them, both from a stats and a value perspective. Last year, I don't think either of them should have won it. Neither of them played at an MVP level IMO, but somebody has to win it every year and I guess the voters opted for the best player on the best team since nobody had a particularly special season.

Honestly given Baltimore's penchant for choking leads away in the most unimaginable ways, feel like it makes sense that they may leave the starters in one extra drive lol.

In those last 8 minutes against Denver, Lamar had one run for 1 yard and 0 pass attempts. In those last 4 minutes against Cleveland, Lamar had 0 runs and 0 pass attempts. In the last 11 minutes against Buffalo, Lamar had 0 runs and 1 pass attempt. I don't think that 1 yard is what made the difference in the MVP race. Does it really matter if he's benched vs. just catching a shotgun snap and handing the ball to someone else? He probably does care about individual awards, just like every other athlete does. Most just lie to the media because it isn't cool to say they care.

There's of course also a chance that some Allen All Pro voters give Lamar the MVP vote too (I think your hypothetical is more likely than mine, but still possible).

Kirby can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing his point is that Lamar and Allen are both deserving this year. That's objectively true.

Yeah, last year was just such a bad year. Like if Dak Prescott had won last year (runner up, and maybe the deserving winner), people would still look back on that like "Really guys? Dak freaking Prescott the MVP of the entire league?" but I suppose that would be better than looking at Lamar as a now 3-time MVP? There's a legitimate chance Lamar ends up with the most MVPs all time.

Assuming he stays healthy, Josh will probably get there even if he doesn't win any Super Bowls or MVPs. He'll need some more All Pro teams in that case though probably but provided he stays healthy, he'll probably be like top 5 all time in several statistical categories when he retires.

John Elway won it in 1987 when Joe Montana was the All Pro QB. That's the only time aside from the Co-MVP situation.

One game = a little less than 6% of snaps if every game was the same number of snaps (and I'd guess we ran fewer plays in Week 17 than usual) so Josh basically sat out around 2 games worth of snaps and Lamar sat out roughly 1 game.

That's mostly just due to Lamar missing games in his non-MVP seasons. If you normalize the stats for a 17 game projection, they're basically equal on wins and yards with Josh averaging a handful more TDs and a few more turnovers. More importantly, it doesn't really matter how they played in totality over the last 6 seasons for the MVP. Lamar was the pretty clear choice for MVP the first time around. Last year was a really wonky year where there were zero deserving candidates but somebody had to win it. The fact that all but one guy opted for Lamar is a little weird IMO but Josh didn't have a spectacular year last season either; may have been more deserving than Lamar though. And this year there are two very strong candidates and it looks like he's ultimately going to win out. Just because it's 3 MVPs to 0 doesn't mean it's an example of bias.

Lamar played 97% of their offensive snaps vs. Josh playing 89%. It's really closer to 1 game. At any rate, both extremely worthy candidates this year. Voters made a good choice even if we think Josh may have been a slightly better choice. If you can get those odds anywhere, you probably want to bet on Lamar. I haven't seen anywhere that is still allowing bets on MVP but I'm not degenerate enough to seek it out aside from the one app I use and the other site I used to use.

Yeah, think we can pretty much lock Lamar in now.

The Ravens definitely have more stars/borderline stars than we do. Having said that, our defense has outperformed theirs overall this season (but Baltimore has come on insanely strong down the stretch while we have faltered) and I think pretty much everyone would agree we have a better OLine. Baltimore definitely better receiving weapons though and Henry will be an All Pro (though Cook has been excellent this season too). Ultimately I don't think this line of argument matters very much. Both teams would likely be pretty dreadful if they lost their QB. Both offenses are totally built around their skillsets and they're both so unique that they're essentially impossible to replace.