As Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen renew MVP rivalry, their real competition remains the Chiefs

Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen are arguably the two best players in the NFL. But to win their first Super Bowl, they still need to get past the Chiefs.

One of the most anticipated head-to-head matchups of the 2024 NFL season played out in New Orleans this February. It wasn’t the Super Bowl.

This happened three days earlier inside a nearby theater.

At the end of the NFL’s annual awards show, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen and his Baltimore Ravens counterpart, Lamar Jackson, waited for the announcement of the league’s most valuable player. Jackson had won MVP honors in 2019 and 2023, and during the previous four months had recorded the best statistical season of his seven-year career. It earned him All-Pro honors at the position. Allen trailed in most statistical categories but ended the season on a tear.

Yet that night in New Orleans, it was Allen, not Jackson, who was named the NFL’s MVP — the first in 21 years to win the award despite not being a first-team All-Pro selection.

“The voters chose who they wanted to pick,” Jackson told journalists this week. “It is what it is.”