Justin Herbert may not have beaten Drake Maye in the NFL Playoffs, but he did keep him from winning the MVP just days before starting in Super Bowl LX against the Seattle Seahawks.
The MVP debate came down to two players, Maye and Matthew Stafford. Stafford had the momentum going into NFL Honors so it wasn't a surprise when he was named the 2025 NFL MVP. What was a surprise is how it happened.
Maye lost the vote by five points, which is essentially one first-place vote as you are awarded 10 points for a first-place vote. Stafford received 24 first-place votes, Maye 23, Josh Allen two, and Justin Herbert... one.
Justin Herbert prevents Drake Maye from winning NFL MVP award
NFL analyst Sam Monson revealed on social media that he was the lone voter for Herbert. When explaining his reasoning, Monson pointed out the superhuman things Herbert did despite having a battered offensive line. He said Herbert "embodied 'value'".
In the defense, Monson explained how Stafford "became a turnover howitzer" when his offensive line became 2/5ths as bad as Herbert's. Based on that explanation, it feels like he might have ranked Maye ahead of Stafford in his ranked-choice voting. Although at the time of writing, that is unclear.
Regardless of where Stafford was on his ballot, Monson giving Maye a first-point vote would have completely changed who the eventual MVP was. It wound up being an extremely close vote, and to the surprise of the entire football world, Herbert was the difference.
To be fair to Monson, his point about Herbert is salient and if we are to take the award literally, it's hard to argue that anyone in the regular season was more valuable than the Chargers signal-caller. He didn't have the most impressive statistical season by any stretch, but Herbert won football games with an offensive line that would make your local high school look good. It was that bad.
It's easy to argue that a healthy Herbert on either the Rams or Patriots would have had a better season than both Maye and Stafford. The same argument could be made that both quarterbacks would have been worse on the Chargers.
While those arguments are easy to support, the MVP award isn't based on what-ifs, it's based on what happened. And for many years, the award has defaulted to a quarterback on a top seed in either conference who had an impressive season.
Voters broke that trend by giving the award to Stafford as a No. 5 seed, but it almost didn't happen. The award nearly defaulted to the QB on a top-two seed as it often does. Justin Herbert stopped that, though, and ironically helped a QB who he has been compared to get a legacy cementing award.