All eyes will be on Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson this weekend as the Kansas City Chiefs will play the Baltimore Ravens in the 2024 AFC Championship Game with a ticket to Super Bowl LVIII up for grabs.
Both quarterbacks addressed the media on Wednesday ahead of the highly anticipated matchup, showing nothing but respect for each other. The Chiefs star, in fact, predicted Jackson to win his second MVP award this year.
“He’s going to be the MVP for a reason,” Mahomes said, as quoted by ProFootballTalk. “He goes out there, he leads his team, he scores, he runs, he throws. He does whatever it takes to win, and that’s what the greats do.”
Jackson has also heaped a lot of praise on Mahomes, who took home the MVP award for the second time last season as he also won his second Super Bowl ring with the Chiefs. “I don’t like competing against him at all,” Jackson said with a laugh. “He’s a great quarterback. Definitely a Hall of Famer, it’s a no-brainer he’s definitely a Hall of Famer. I believe it’s just two greats, up and coming greats, going toe-to-toe like a heavyweight fight. Heavyweight matchup, that’s what I see.”
Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes during a game between the Ravens and the Chiefs (2020)
Mahomes comes from pulling off a hard-fought win against Josh Allen’s Buffalo Bills in one of the best NFL rivalries in the modern era, but he sees Jackson as another opponent he’s destined to compete against for many more years: “I knew we were gonna play in a lot of games like this as our careers have gone on, and I’m sure this will be the first of many.”
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Lamar Jackson’s stats that make him a strong MVP candidate
While the only thing that matters for Jackson right now is to take care of business against the Chiefs to keep the Ravens’ Super Bowl hopes alive, the 27-year-old is expected to at least take home the MVP prize this season.
Jackson already received the award in 2019, when he led the league with 36 passing touchdowns while setting the record for most rushing yards by a quarterback in a single season (1,206).
In 2023, the Ravens star set career-highs in passing yards (3,678), completed passes (307) and completion percentage (67.2). There will be other contenders such as Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey and Mahomes also in contention. But as Mahomes suggested, Jackson has made a strong case to emerge victorious.
