The 2025 NFL regular season was a wild one, and the award debates are no different. These are my picks for awards, from Most Valuable Player to Coach of the Year. As is clear, I don’t care if people—many who might not even watch the games and/or will stat watch or use borderline meaningless things like EPA—think any of these picks are “out there.”
MVP: Bo Nix, Broncos
2025 NFL MVP is going to Matthew Stafford or Drake Maye. No doubt they had excellent seasons. But Broncos quarterback Bo Nix is my pick. I went in depth with my reasoning here if you have time for a 10-minute YouTube video, but to sum:
First, Nix’s 2025 season actually stacks up nicely with Lamar Jackson’s 2023 MVP campaign:
And keep in mind that Jackson had a stronger supporting cast—plus the No. 1 defense in football. For as high-upside as the Broncos defense is, especially in terms of sacking the quarterback, I think it’s fair to say that Baltimore’s unit under Mike Macdonald (which took the ball away twice as much) was a better group.
Stafford had two costly performances in losses to the Panthers and Falcons, and MVP winners very rarely come from teams that didn’t win the division (granted, the NFC West uncommonly stacked).
Maye played one of the easiest schedules in NFL history—with just one win over a team with a winning record and a bad performance with two turnovers and five sacks taken in the only non-Bills matchup with a winning team (the Steelers).
There were no such performances from Nix where it cost his team. Some games might not have had the prettiest passing numbers. For example, take Week 18, when the Bronco secured the No. 1 seed. Sean Payton and company knew they would dominate defensively, so there was no need for the offense to try to light up the scoreboard. Nix played smart football, keeping some drives moving with his legs in a game he was under a lot more pressure than you’d expect. Being the least sacked quarterback in the league has more to do with his play than anything.
But when Nix was needed—like lighting up the Packers, or picking up the defense when it couldn’t get off the field at Washington, or when he helped put up 33 fourth-quarter points in an insane comeback versus the Giants in a game the other side of the ball mostly struggled—he came through.
In wins over the Eagles, Texans, Chiefs (once when Patrick Mahomes played), and Packers, the second-year quarterback stepped up his game and played like a clear Most Valuable Player.
Nix had seven game-winning drives total, including five fourth-quarter comebacks.
Stafford and Maye had one game-winning drive each. That’s certainly not some determining factor for MVP—not even close. But it speaks to the value Nix brought to his team in 2025.
This is the criteria for Most Valuable Player: “The award honors a player who had the most valuable season.”
It’s not about, “if this player would’ve been here” or “this player has the best stats.” It’s the player who had the most valuable season, and Nix has a strong case while helping Denver win 14 games, taking the AFC West and the AFC’s top seed.
If this was a few decades ago, I bet Nix would be getting legitimate MVP talk. But the ultra-negative sports media machine isn’t going to let that happen this quickly after they said the guy couldn’t play over the past year-plus.
Unfortunately, dominant mainstream and consensus groupthink would paint the idea of Bo Nix as the NFL MVP as a complete joke. They said the same thing when Josh Allen was playing like an MVP earlier in his career, remaining in constant denial until he kept up that level of play year after year before finally winning MVP last season.
Offensive Player of the Year: Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Seahawks
Stepping up as the clear No. 1 wide receiver in Seattle, Jaxon Smith-Njigba posted a monstrous 119/1,793/10 line for the No. 1 seed in the conference. The scorching start to the season, when it looked like Calvin Johnson’s single-season record was at serious risk of being broken, set the tone—and he didn’t slow up much from there. JSN had at least both four receptions and 72 yards in every game except for one (a 26-0 win over the Vikings when the offense didn’t have to do a ton), breaking out as undoubtedly one of the top weapons in football. The speed and pace which Smith-Njigba runs his routes allows him to get open and do serious damage to opposing secondaries, as he did all 2025.
Defensive Player of the Year: Myles Garrett, Browns
This one needs little explanation, with Myles Garrett breaking the single-season sack record with 23.0. While he was going to be Defensive Player of the Year regardless, the Browns star certainly cut it close—getting shut out in Week 17 before finally breaking the record in the final minutes of the Week 18 win against the Bengals. The former No. 1 overall pick commands rare attention from opposing offenses, so to still be able to finish plays with sacks as much as he does is super impressive.
Offensive Rookie of the Year: Harold Fannin Jr., Browns
There are several players who had Offensive Rookie of the Year type of seasons, but I don’t understand why Harold Fannin Jr. isn’t getting more recognition for the year he had. From the jump, Fannin was a versatile, productive piece for Cleveland—displaying the skillset that made him a steal in the third round. Fannin caught a pass in all 16 games (he missed Week 18 due to injury), was the difference in his final game with a touchdown catch in the Browns’ upset win over the Steelers, and ended with 72 receptions for 731 yards and six touchdowns as a tight end—along with another score on the ground. It was extremely close between Tetairoa McMillan, who hit 1,000 yards receiving, and Fannin for my ultimate selection; but I opt for the consistency of Fannin.
Defensive Rookie of the Year: James Pearce Jr., Falcons
Respectfully, this award might speak to how media narratives and groupthink take over, with the voters going overwhelmingly for Browns rookie linebacker Carson Schwesinger, who racked up 156 total tackles, 2.5 sacks, and two interceptions in Jim Schwartz’s defense. But James Pearce Jr.’s rookie campaign is being totally discounted, probably in part because many of the narrative drivers thought the Falcons were dumb for trading their 2026 first-round pick to draft him. Pearce had 10.5 sacks for Atlanta, becoming the first rookie to do so since Micah Parsons—and the 37th rookie in history with double-digit sacks. The Tennessee product was explosive off the edge getting pressure and finishing at the quarterback for an Atlanta defense that showed major flashes of top-level play when at their best—and Pearce along with fellow rookies Jalon Walker and Xavier Watts boosted them.
Comeback Player of the Year: Christian McCaffrey, 49ers
Comeback Player of the Year has other options like Dak Prescott and Aidan Hutchinson (and even Philip Rivers given that return to the field after five years), but Christian McCaffrey had his 2024 season totally derailed by injury—and he bounced back to play every game while handling 413 touches for the 49ers. Ironically, with San Francisco so injured throughout the season, McCaffrey was a steady force available for all 17 games. He ran for 1,202 yards and 10 touchdowns while adding 102 receptions for 924 yards and seven receiving scores. CMC is the Comeback Player of the Year.
Coach of the Year: Mike Macdonald, Seahawks
This was the most difficult award to pick in my opinion, with all of Ben Johnson (winning the stacked NFC North in Year 1 is highly impressive), Kyle Shanahan (12 wins with all those injuries), Mike Vrabel (taking the Pats from one of the worst records in the league to 14 wins), Liam Coen (immediately getting the Jags to play his style of ball and go 13-4 while winning the AFC South), and Sean Payton (toppling the Chiefs in a division that also includes the Chargers, and with a somewhat limited supporting cast on offense and the J.K. Dobbins injury) as definite worthy picks. However, the Seahawks went 14-3 to win the NFC West while fending off the 12-win Rams and 49ers, doing it with a new quarterback and a defense that was awesome and saved its best for last in the deciding game for the division and the No. 1 seed in the conference.