Stafford Over Maye! Dart Over McMillan? NFL Honors Voter Explains His Ballot

The NFL presented its major awards for the 2025 season on Thursday night, and I was honored to again be part of the 50-member panel chosen by the Associated Press to vote on its All-Pro team and season awards. I’ve been able to do this for the last four years, and the ballot has expanded in that time to now have us voting for a top five on each of the eight major awards: MVP, Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year, Coach of the Year, Assistant Coach of the Year, Comeback Player of the Year and Defensive Rookie of the Year. I like the idea of transparency in these kinds of awards votes, so I’m sharing my ballot publicly here and trying to explain my rationale for voting as I did. As usual, there were some awards where my voting closely mirrored the overall top five, and others where I was more of an outlier than I’d probably like to be. Any time you’re judging players at multiple positions across a broad spectrum of successful and not-so-successful teams, you’ll get a wide range of interpretations regarding who the best players and coaches are. It’s also important to note these are regular-season awards. Ballots were submitted the day after the season ended, so playoff success has no bearing. MVP: Rams QB Matthew Stafford Top five in voting: Stafford, Drake Maye, Josh Allen, Christian McCaffrey, Trevor LawrenceMy ballot: Stafford, Maye, Myles Garrett, Jared Goff, Jaxon Smith-Njigba A few things here. First, I continue to be confused that a voting panel of the same 50 people on All-Pro and awards ballots can have decidedly different takes on who is the best between those two. For first-team All-Pro quarterback, Stafford beat Maye by a 31-18 margin. For this MVP, the same panel voted Stafford over Maye 24-23. A year ago, this panel voted Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson as first-team All-Pro at quarterback while Buffalo’s Josh Allen as the MVP. I just think the two awards are too close to have different outcomes. If Player A is the better quarterback in direct competition, it’s hard to say Player B was a more valuable player. “Valuable” leaves it open to some interpretation, so some will take valuable as “more integral to the team’s success.” Some argued that Stafford, with elite receivers in Puka Nacua and Davante Adams and a smart offensive head coach in Sean McVay, had a stronger supporting cast than Maye, but those factors contribute to the QB decision the same as MVP, in my opinion. I see both sides of the overall debate, as I laid out in my All-Pro ballot last month. Stafford had 12 more touchdown passes than any other quarterback, the largest such margin since Peyton Manning threw for 55 in 2013. Also, Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was the NFL Assistant Coach of the Year, so Maye had good help there. In our voting system, a first-place vote for MVP carries 10 points and a second-place vote gets five, so the first-place votes really matter. Stafford won the voting points by a 366-361 margin, which means a single outlier first-place vote like the one for Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert could shift the final outcome – and did! As for my top five, I wanted to make it clear it shouldn’t be “the top five quarterbacks,” so after the top two, I made sure to include my pick for Defensive Player of the Year, who really should be in yearly consideration for the overall MVP. Offensive Player of the Year: Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba Top five in voting: Smith-Njigba, McCaffrey, Nacua, Bijan Robinson, MayeMy ballot: Smith-Njigba, Nacua, Robinson, James Cook, McCaffrey With the MVP becoming mostly a quarterback award, voters have offset that by seemingly reserving this one for the best non-quarterback. It’s not written that way anywhere, but the voting plays out like that. The voting was divided enough here that no player got more than 14 votes out of 50, and I thought Smith-Njigba was the clear choice, the best at his position and contributing hugely to a top-five offense. I have McCaffrey lower than most voters. While he kept the 49ers winning when everything around him seemed to be injured, I thought his production statistically wasn’t as good as the two backs I had ahead of him. Not only did Robinson lead the NFL in yards from scrimmage and finish with 172 more yards than McCaffrey, but he did it on 47 fewer touches. Defensive Player of the Year: Browns EDGE Myles Garrett Top five in voting: Garrett, Will Anderson, Micah Parsons, Nik Bonitto, Aidan HutchinsonMy ballot: Garrett, Anderson, Parsons, Burns, Hutchinson This was the opposite of OPOY, a unanimous and easy selection since Garrett set the NFL record with 23 sacks. I was pleased to have four of my top five make the actual top five, in nearly the correct order. Choosing Burns over Bonitto was largely on production since Burns had 2.5 more sacks and eight more tackles for loss, with one more forced fumble and one more fumble recovery. Those two were close enough that you can make a case for either, and obviously, Bonitto contributed to a greater team success in Denver than Burns did in New York. Coach of the Year: Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel Top five in voting: Vrabel, Liam Coen, Mike Macdonald, Ben Johnson, Kyle ShanahanMy ballot: Coen, Shanahan, Vrabel, McDonald, Johnson. Again, it’s cool to have my top five as the top five. Vrabel edged Coen 19-16 in terms of first-place votes. This award is generally seen as “success above expectation,” and both were stellar in that aspect. I valued what Coen was able to do as a first-time head coach more than what Vrabel did as someone in his first year with a new team, but with considerable head coaching experience. Both flipped the script on the identity of their franchises in a single season, never an easy thing to do. I think what Shanahan did to win consistently despite losing so many key players to injury throughout the season was commendable. [Related: Takeaways from NFL Honors] Assistant Coach of the Year: Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels Top five in voting: McDaniels, Broncos DC Vance Joseph, Vikings DC Brian Flores, Seahawks OC Klint Kubiak, Eagles DC Vic FangioMy ballot: McDaniels, Rams DC Chris Shula, Kubiak, Flores, 49ers DC Robert Saleh. This closely mirrored the head coach voting, with the New England guy winning 17-10 on first-place votes here. I thought the Patriots’ and Maye’s emergence on offense was a huge story, so this is well-deserved. I dinged Denver’s defense a bit for tying for the fourth-fewest takeaways in the NFL, but Joseph had a top-five defense in most other respects. You almost always see these honors go to coordinators, so I’m a little amused/impressed to see a vote cast for Bills offensive line coach Aaron Kromer. (Buffalo did have the league’s No. 1 rushing attack, but also finished 21st in sack percentage.) Comeback Player of the Year: 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey Top five in voting: McCaffrey, Hutchinson, Dak Prescott, Trevor Lawrence, Stefon DiggsMy ballot: McCaffrey, Hutchinson, Prescott, Diggs, Chris Olave. Another easy call with McCaffrey getting 31 of 50 votes. The AP last year added the stipulation that this award is essentially intended to reward a player coming back from missing games due to injury, rather than their own mediocrity. It’s not just a most improved award. In retrospect, Lawrence missed seven games in 2024 and had a great year in leading the Jaguars to a division title, so he should be on my ballot somewhere. Offensive Rookie of the Year: Panthers WR Tetairoa McMillan Top five in voting: McMillan, Tyler Shough, TreVeyon Henderson, Jaxson Dart, Emeka Egbuka.My ballot: Dart, Henderson, McMillan, Shough, Egbuka So, it turns out I was the only voter out of 50 to have Dart first here. I wasn’t expecting that, but I simply thought Dart’s overall season, with 24 total touchdowns despite losing his best receiver and back for much of the year, put him ahead of Shough. McMillan had a great season for Carolina, helping them to a surprise division title, but his yards (1,014) would have ranked fifth in 2024 and his touchdowns (seven) would have tied for fourth, so it seemed less remarkable beyond edging Egbuka for best rookie receiver. Defensive Rookie of the Year: Browns LB Carson Schwesinger Top five in voting: Schwesinger, Nick Emmanwori, James Pearce, Xavier Watts, Abdul CarterMy ballot: Pearce, Schwesinger, Watts, Carter, Nik Scourton Here I go again, as one of just two voters to have Pearce at the top of my ballot. Pearce’s 10.5 sacks were five more than any other rookie and a huge part of Atlanta’s defense taking a big step forward. Schwesinger is deserving with 50 more tackles than any other rookie, 2.5 sacks and two interceptions – a little of everything. It was a close call for me. I’m more disappointed in leaving Emmanwori out, which is a clear oversight given all he did for Seattle’s defense.