Let’s roll out the red carpet for the midseason-ish awards. A quick note, these awards are based on what has happened through eight weeks. They’re not projections on how the awards race will stack up at the end of the year.
Offensive player of the year
Nominees: Saquon Barkley, Philadelphia Eagles; Justin Jefferson, Minnesota Vikings; Ja’Marr Chase, Cincinnati Bengals; Derrick Henry, Baltimore Ravens.
Did even the Ravens think adding Henry would go this smoothly? The ageless back is on track to crack 2,000 at 30 years old. After a wobbly opening week against the Chiefs, Henry has run over and around every defense he has faced. He leads the league in rushing yards, yards from scrimmage, touchdowns and has tacked on the longest run of the season for good measure. The only player with more explosive rushes than Henry this season is … Lamar Jackson.
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Typically, a team adding a veteran running back is the kind of move that draws offseason column inches but fails to move the championship needle. But Henry has helped the Ravens reimagine their offense around Jackson, making the team more viable for a deep postseason run.
Jackson is still the key Jenga block. Without Henry, the Ravens could still put together an excellent offense. Without Jackson, they would be in trouble. But pairing the two together has pushed Baltimore’s offense to a new level. They have the most distinctive and effective running game in the league; teams accustomed to generic ground attacks look shell-shocked when they face the Jackson-Henry tandem.
Somehow, pairing the best downhill runner in the NFL with the league MVP has been better in reality than it was in theory.
Winner: Henry
Defensive player of the year
Nominees: TJ Watt, Pittsburgh Steelers; Brian Branch, Detroit Lions; Will Anderson, Houston Texans; Dexter Lawrence, New York Giants; Chris Jones, Kansas City Chiefs; Aidan Hutchinson, Detroit Lions; Nick Bosa, San Francisco 49ers.
There are a dizzying array of candidates this season. Before his season-ending leg injury, Hutchinson was waltzing away with the award. With Hutchinson missing time, it’s tempting to hand the award to Brian Branch, Detroit’s do-everything safety, slot corner and part-time linebacker. Branch is the secret sauce to the Lions’ defensive success, a multi-positional star who plays with unteachable, two-steps ahead vision.
But Branch is the hipster pick. The logical choice is TJ Watt. The Steelers’ edge-rusher continues to take over games single-handedly. He’s up to 6.5 sacks this season and has forced four fumbles, recovering two. Against the run, he has been flat-out unblockable, clocking up 14 run stops. No one with his sack total is close to the double-digit mark.
What’s remarkable about Watt is not that he wins, but how. Anderson, Hutchinson and Myles Garrett have multiple ways to puncture the backfield and rock quarterbacks. They stack move on top of move. Hutchinson aside, the league’s great and good shuffle across the defensive formation. Not Watt. He doesn’t attack from weird angles. He doesn’t have a deep bag of tricks. He doesn’t get any schematic help. He lines up in one spot – as a left-side defensive end – and lets it rip.
That’s not an exaggeration. Watt has one move: a dip-and-rip, speed rush. He explodes off the line, arcs around the opposing right tackle and closes to the quarterback. That’s it.
For most of his career, Watt tried stuff. But he has now traded out unpredictability for efficiency. The idea is not to win every rep, but that when he does win, it’s quick and clean, giving him a chance not just to pressure or drop a quarterback, but to attack the ball and force a fumble. His historic forced fumble figures are not an accident, they’re by design. Watt has elected to chase gamechanging plays rather than beef up his pressure figures.
Watt’s metrics this season won’t blow you away. He’s totted up 28 total pressures, putting him 28th in the league – and second on his own team behind Cameron Heyward. In terms of pass-rush win rate (how often he’s beating his blocker), he’s 37th in the league, behind two teammates – Heyward and rotational rusher Nick Herbig. But there is plenty of context. No pass-rusher has drawn more double teams, been chipped as often, or been gameplanned against as much as Watt.
He may not hit all the traditional benchmarks, but no defender has been as valuable to their unit as Watt.
Winner: Watt
Offensive rookie of the year
Nominees: Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders; Malik Nabers, New York Giants; Brock Bowers, Las Vegas Raiders; Brian Thomas Jr, Jacksonville Jaguars.
In a stacked class, this is not particularly close. Jayden Daniels is lapping the field. Daniels has proven to be every bit the dual threat he was in college, as comfortable breaking away for an explosive run as he is dicing up defenses from the pocket. Eight weeks into his career, he is navigating games with the confidence of a five-year vet.
Daniels leads the league in the RBSDM quarterback composite, which measures the value of a play and how much the quarterback can be deemed responsible for that value. That data extends back to 2010. In that time, no rookie or first-year starter (including Patrick Mahomes!) has led the field through the opening eight weeks of a season.
Does anyone deserve this more than Washington fans? Like Andy Dufresne, they escaped through a sewage pipe, this one of Dan Snyder’s ownership and have emerged with a rookie quarterback playing at an MVP level. Next up, Zihuatanejo, or, you know, a playoff win.
Winner: Daniels
Defensive rookie of the year
Nominees: Jared Verse, LA Rams; Evan Williams, Green Bay Packers; Laiatu Latu, Indianapolis Colts; Quinyon Mitchell, Philadelphia Eagles; T’Vondre Sweat, Tennessee Titans.
The Rams were never going to replace Aaron Donald’s Hall of Fame impact. But they approached last offseason hoping to recreate Donald’s production in the aggregate, drafting a pair of rookies they hoped could one day headline a group that would stop them pining for Donald.
Midway through the season, they’ve gotten more than they bargained for. Jared Verse, the 19th overall pick, is already a legitimate star. He has picked up only 2.5 sacks in seven games, but he’s spent the bulk of those games camped in opposing backfields. Verse had notched 32 total pressures this season, good for ninth in the league, and only Hutchinson has a better per snap pressure rate.
Again: Verse is a rookie! Rookie edge-rushers are supposed to be flashy. Sometimes their sack production is inflated but their under-the-hood numbers do not stack up to scrutiny. Verse is the inverse. He’s an every-down wrecking ball who hasn’t quite been able to close. Eventually, the sack total will tick up. But in the first eight weeks of his career he’s played at a Pro Bowl level.
Winner: Verse.
Coach of the year
Nominees: Matt LaFleur, Green Bay Packers; Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions; Dan Quinn, Washington Commanders; Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh Steelers; Andy Reid, Kansas City Chiefs, Kevin O’Connell, Minnesota Vikings.
Picking a coach of the year is tricky at the best of times. Good luck figuring it out this year. You can toss up the names of any of the three coaches at the top of the NFC North and plump for whichever hits the ground first. Campbell has turned the Lions into a certified juggernaut. Then you have Tomlin, who has the Steelers first in the AFC North despite making a quarterback change. And there is Reid, who has the two-time defending champs off to an undefeated start, even if the vibes have felt a little off at times.
In terms of pure coaching, LaFleur building a successful offense around Malik Willis in the absence of Jordan Love is as strong a case as any coach has put together. It’s also tough to look past Quinn, who has put the ecosystem in place to allow Daniels to shine and has the Commanders in contention for a division title in what was expected to be a rebuilding year.
But O’Connell ties both those ideas together. As the author of the Vikings offense, he has helped to rejuvenate Sam Darnold’s career, constructing a top-10 unit by points per game around the journeyman quarterback. O’Connell also deserves kudos for signing off on Minnesota’s confuse-and-clobber defense. Brian Flores is the architect of the Vikings’ puzzling, erratic, delightful unit, but O’Connell hired Flores and his approach – a style that would have made plenty of other head coaches shudder.
Winner: O’Connell
Most Valuable Player
Nominees: Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills; Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens; Jared Goff, Detroit Lions; Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders; CJ Stroud, Houston Texans.
This is tight. Goff is having the best stretch of his career, torching the preconceived notion that he is merely a function of Detroit’s system. Stroud has kept the Texans’ offense afloat despite facing as much incoming fire as any quarterback in the league.
But there are two standout candidates: Allen and Jackson.
Jackson, the reigning MVP, remains the keystone of the Ravens offense. He is running a more prolific offense than Allen. But the Bills’ quarterback is putting together the best season of his career with a slightly higher degree of difficulty than Jackson.
In his seventh season, Allen has sanded off some of the rougher edges of his game. He has tossed only one interception against 14 touchdowns this season, cutting down on the mind-numbing turnovers that have trailed him in previous years. Part of that is due to getting rid of the ball quicker than at any point in his career, which has seen him morph into the most efficient passer in the league. And that’s all without curbing his trademark aggressiveness or playmaking instincts – Allen still leads the league in big-time throw rate, according to Pro Football Focus.
At this stage of his career, the Bills go as Allen goes. And he has the team positioned to rip off their fifth successive AFC East title. He edges out Jackson – just.
Winner: Allen
