Jonathan Taylor’s latest scoring outburst—his three touchdowns on Sunday marked the second consecutive week and third time in the last four games he’s accomplished the feat—has raised an interesting question.
Could the Indianapolis Colts star (or any other running back for that matter) win the AP NFL Most Valuable Player award?
There was an easy answer for this until the early 2010s. There was no doubt an RB could win MVP in eras gone by, as 18 backs claimed the hardware during a 55-year stretch between 1957 (when Jim Brown won the inaugural award) and 2012, when Adrian Peterson became the last to accomplish the feat.
That question also has a simple answer in 2025: No, it’s not going to happen. Quarterbacks have taken home the award every season following AP’s scintillating campaign and are more dominant than ever right now.
Could Taylor shift the narrative and put his position back atop the league’s hierarchy? It may be possible, but this outcome is highly improbable.
A quarterback is likely to win the award again in 2025 as each of the six current favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook play the position. Despite some truly special running back seasons over the past few years, the position hasn’t even had a top-two finisher since Todd Gurley in 2017.
While Taylor has been off to a blistering start, he’s going to need an even more spectacular finish to defy the odds.
With that in mind, let’s check out the current MVP front-runners, highlight what Taylor has accomplished in the first half of the campaign—and compare it to the more recent RB MVP seasons—and project what he’ll need to do over the next nine games to beat out the elite quarterbacks currently competing for the honors.