Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson won NFL MVP with relative ease on Thursday, collecting 49 of the 50 available first place votes. The one voter that backed someone else, however, raised a reasonable point about the entire process.
Aaron Schatz of FTN, the lone voter who did not choose Jackson for MVP, voted instead for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen. On Thursday, he pointed out that some voters had selected Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott and San Francisco’s Brock Purdy as first-team All-Pro picks without casting MVP votes for them.
I will admit I’m confused about other voters who had Prescott and Purdy as first team all pro but not MVP. If you are MVP, don’t you have to be first-team All-Pro?
— Aaron Schatz 🏈 (@ASchatzNFL) February 9, 2024
Jackson was admittedly the choice for first-team All-Pro by voters for the Associated Press, the PFWA, and the Sporting News. Prescott got the nod for second-team. If nothing else, it is a good demonstration of how different the standards are for certain voters, and how an All-Pro nod and an MVP vote are not necessarily seen as representative of the same thing.
Still, Schatz was the only one backing Allen, who finished a distant fifth in the final voting. If he wanted to dissent, he may have been better off casting his vote for another player that many saw as deserving of that sort of recognition.
