Trevor Lawrence lost out on two NFL Honors on Thursday -- but he wasn't the finalist who was robbed. The voting results reveal a stark ranking, sparking debate and questioning the definition of "valuable."
No Jacksonville Jaguar has ever come so close to earning the NFL's Most Valuable Player award or the league's Comeback Player of the Year honor.
Trevor Lawrence, who this past season joined the ranks of the NFL's elite quarterbacks, was a finalist for both plaudits, but lost out to Los Angeles Rams QB Matthew Stafford in the MVP race and San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey for the Comeback award at the NFL Honors show on Thursday night at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
Jaguars head coach Liam Coen was also in the running for an end-of-season honor, Coach of the Year for the 2025 season.
Coen, in his first year in Jacksonville, was among five COY finalists, but it was New England Patriots first-year coach Mike Vrabel, who didn't attend Thursday's awards show, who netted the COY honor.
Other finalists included the Niners' Kyle Shanahan; Ben Johnson of the Chicago Bears; and the Seattle Seahawks' Mike Macdonald.
Some controversy -- and definitely blatant disrespect -- followed the announcement of Stafford's anointment as MVP. It was the second time the 17-year NFL veteran has earned a major NFL honor, after he was named Comeback Player of the Year in 2011 while with the Detroit Lions.
Following the awards show, results of the vote counts for MVP and other honors were released by the Associated Press, which selects the panel of 50 NFL writers and media members who vote on the awards and oversees the selection process.
The AP's balloting from this nationwide media panel ranked players one through five with scoring on a 10-5-3-2-1 basis. AP uses a ranked-choice, weighted voting system in which voters rank their top five candidates, with 10 points for first place, five for second, three for third, two for fourth, and one for fifth.
Below are the final rankings, with total points and first-place votes.
Matthew Stafford: 366 points (with 24 first-place votes)
Drake Maye: 361 (23)
Josh Allen: 91 (2)
Christian McCaffrey: 71
Trevor Lawrence: 49
Justin Herbert, quarterback for the Los Angeles Chargers, was not among the MVP finalists, but received one first-place vote.
Drake May might have the biggest beef with the lone first-place vote for Herbert, which turned out to be cast by former Pro Football Focus staffer and "Check the Mic" podcaster Sam Monson.
Minus Monson's childish quibbling about the semantics of the word "valuable," that first-place vote could have turned May into the season's MVP -- not a terrible outcome, since the Pats' second-year quarterback had arguably better overall stats than Stafford. (The "valuable" nit-picking has led to more than one ridiculous outcome in who took home the NBA's MVP award, complete with demands at times to pair the most-"valuable" honor with a Most Outstanding Player award.)
Lawrence had no first-place votes, and however stark that looks on paper, that's OK. The Jaguars QB had a season for the ages from the point of view of the franchise, but he wasn't MVP-worthy. At least not yet.
The same can't be said about Drake May, squeamish as some might be to anoint a 23-year-old as the NFL's best.
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