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2/9/23

4 min read

Patrick Mahomes Wins Second Career NFL MVP Award in Landslide

There will be plenty of suspense when Patrick Mahomes takes the field in Sunday's Super Bowl. There wasn't much suspense when his name was announced as the NFL's Most Valuable Player Thursday night at NFL Honors in Phoenix.

For the second time in his six-year career, Mahomes was the clear choice for the NFL's top individual honor awarded by The Associated Press, becoming just the 10th player to win it multiple times. It is the third time in his career Mahomes has received MVP votes, winning it in 2018 and finishing third in 2020.

Mahomes won the award over a list of other quarterbacks, including his Super Bowl opponent Sunday, Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles, as well as Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals and Josh Allen, of the Buffalo Bills. The voting, however, wasn't close: Mahomes received 48 of the 50 first-place votes, with Hurts and Allen receiving the other two first-place votes. A total of 16 players received at least one vote.

Overall, Mahomes finished with 490 points. Hurts was second (193), Allen third (151), and Burrow fourth (128).

"I understand how lucky I am to be in this organization," Mahomes tweeted after winning the award. "I understand how lucky I am to play with guys that are going to be Hall of Famers. I would never be standing here today without ya'll, giving everything that we have together to go for the ultimate goal: The Super Bowl. See ya'll this weekend."

Mahomes won the award after throwing for a career-high 5,250 yards and 41 touchdowns. He led the league in both figures, and was named both a first team All-Pro and a Pro Bowler. His yardage was the fourth-most in a season all-time, and only 11 other players have ever thrown more touchdowns in a single season.

And he did it after losing wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who was traded to Miami last offseason, and with a group of new and unproven talent around him.

"The thing that separates Mahomes for me, it's not just the performance, but who he's performing with," said analyst Eric Mangini of The 33rd Team. "He loses Tyreek Hill, and I wasn't sure how much that would affect him because of the amount of coverage that could be pushed to Travis Kelce.

"But he's done a great job of being a force multiplier. That's what I look for in great quarterbacks is can they make the players around them better? And he's taken a group of receivers that there were a lot of questions with and he's consistently made them better.

Mahomes led the Chiefs to a 14-3 regular-season record, their seventh consecutive AFC West title, and fifth-straight AFC Championship Game. And on Sunday, Kansas City will play in its third Super Bowl in the last four years, looking for a second win.

Mahomes joined Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Kurt Warner, Brett Favre, Steve Young, Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown as the only players to win MVP more than once.

The Chiefs quarterback nearly became the 10th player to ever win multiple Offensive Player of the Year awards. Mahomes received 10 votes and finished as the runner-up for the second time in his career, losing to the Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson (35 votes). It is Mahomes' fourth time receiving votes for the award (he won in 2018, was runner-up in 2020 and fourth in 2019).

WATCH: The Greatness of Patrick Mahomes


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