Football is so back. It’s so great. The NFL Week 1 treated us to an absolute barnburner where Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills came back at home to win 41-40 against Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens. It’s one of the best games in regular season history and the odds for MVP have a new frontrunner.
According to Vegas’ odds, Jackson entered the season as the favorite. Allen now has +350 odds, making him the favorite over Lamar, who sits second at +475. Allen and Jackson are the most recent MVPs in the NFL.
The first nine names on the list are quarterbacks. Joe Burrow from the Bengals is third, as Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and Commanders’ Jayden Daniels are tied at +850 to round the top 5. The first non-QB player to be on the list is Ravens‘ running back Derrick Henry, who has +7000 odds to be MVP.
Lamar is not the frontrunner, but he was still elite
While Allen winning the game makes him the MVP favorite, that doesn’t mean Lamar Jackson played poorly. In the end, he still guided his team to 40 points and at moments, looked absolutely unstoppable.
Lamar completed 14/19 passes for 209 yards and two touchdowns. Since he is a dual-threat quarterback, he also racked up 70 yards rushing and another touchdown. The issue is that Allen was just too good. The Bills‘ QB had 33/46 completions for 394 yards and two touchdowns. Allen, who is also a great runner, added 30 rushing yards and two additional touchdowns.
The Ravens are now battling an absolute awful trend
It’s not the first time that the Ravens lose what was almost a locked win. Per NFL analyst Benjamin Solak of ESPN, “The Ravens have now lost 8 games since the 2021 season in which they, at one point, had a win probability of at least 90%. That’s three more than the next closest team.”
When you look Ravens’ games, they actually seem impossible to stop. Hence, the fact that they’ve never even played at the Super Bowl with Lamar Jackson is somewhat shocking. However, watching Solak’s stat, it’s clear this team has a trend of losing games out of the blue. That is unfortunate for a team that is clearly needing a Super Bowl win.