Every September, the same conversation happens in football circles: who wins MVP, who wins Defensive Player of the Year, which rookie breaks out first. It’s fun barroom debate, but it’s also real betting value that a lot of bettors leave on the table while they’re busy grinding single-game lines. Award futures move all season long based on early-season role, opportunity, and health, which means the sharpest window to find an edge is often right now, before Week 1 snaps get played and the market settles around a handful of obvious names.
We put together our season preview coverage for all 32 teams — you can find the full 2026 NFL season previews hub here — and pulled the threads together into six award predictions. Some of these align with where the market already sits. A couple of them lean into value we think the board hasn’t fully priced yet. Here’s our reasoning for each.
Most Valuable Player: Josh Allen
Josh Allen enters the season as the consensus favorite, and for good reason. He’s been a top-five MVP vote-getter in four straight seasons, which is the kind of sustained excellence that voters reward even when a flashier storyline pops up midseason. What separates Allen from the rest of the field is the dual-threat profile — he’s one of the few quarterbacks in the league who can put up 4,000-plus passing yards and 500-plus rushing yards in the same year, and that rushing production gives him a scoring floor that pocket passers simply don’t have.
The addition of DJ Moore gives the Buffalo Bills offense another live option outside the numbers, which should help keep defenses honest and open up easier reads for Allen instead of forcing him into as many contested, high-difficulty throws. Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes both have paths to this award, but both are working back from 2025 seasons that were disrupted by injury, and voters tend to favor the quarterback who stayed on the field and kept producing over the one making a comeback. Allen’s combination of health, weapons, and a proven track record makes him the pick.
Offensive Player of the Year: Jahmyr Gibbs
Gibbs was already one of the most efficient backs in the league last year, and the numbers back it up: 1,223 rushing yards at five yards a carry, 13 rushing touchdowns, and 77 catches out of the backfield for another five scores through the air. That’s a complete offensive weapon, not just a runner, and it’s exactly the profile voters have gravitated toward in recent years as the award has shifted away from quarterbacks.
What tips this from “very good” to “favorite” is the opportunity in front of him. David Montgomery’s departure clears out the earlier committee approach, and an improved offensive line in front of him should raise his per-carry efficiency even further. The Detroit Lions offense is built to feed him early and often, and in a league where volume plus efficiency is the clearest path to hardware, Gibbs checks both boxes. Ja’Marr Chase, Puka Nacua, and Bijan Robinson are all in the conversation, but none of them combine role, opportunity, and proven production quite like Gibbs does.
Defensive Player of the Year: Myles Garrett
Garrett is coming off a season that ended with all 50 first-place votes and 23 sacks, and now he’s doing it in a new context after being traded to the Los Angeles Rams. That’s the part of this pick that matters most: he’s not just repeating what he did last year, he’s doing it on a roster that’s being built around contending immediately, with more attention and fewer double teams to work through if the Rams’ front generates pressure from multiple spots.
Will Anderson Jr. and Aidan Hutchinson both put together strong 2025 campaigns and will factor into the conversation, and Micah Parsons would normally be part of this discussion too, but an injury has him ticketed to miss time into the season, which removes one of the few players capable of unseating Garrett on pure talent. Garrett’s combination of a proven track record, a fresh situation, and a thinner field above him makes him our pick to repeat.
Offensive Rookie of the Year: Jadarian Price
The market favorite here is Jeremiyah Love, and we understand why — he’s a supremely talented back with real receiving chops. But we’re going a different direction, because Love’s situation carries real friction: a high ankle sprain in the preseason, a committee approach that will share carries with James Conner and Tyler Allgeier, and an offensive line that isn’t doing him many favors on a rebuilding roster. That’s a lot of variables working against a rookie who needs volume to win a counting-stats award.
Price walks into a cleaner runway. He’s stepping in for Kenneth Walker III as the Seattle Seahawks‘ lead back, and early camp reports have praised his pass protection, which is often the fastest way for a rookie back to earn a coach’s trust and stay on the field on early downs. His clearest competition, Zach Charbonnet, is working back from a torn ACL and won’t be pushing for the job right away. That gives Price several weeks to build a lead in touches and production before the backfield picture gets more contested — exactly the kind of opportunity-driven edge we look for in a rookie market that’s still fluid this early in the season.
Defensive Rookie of the Year: David Bailey
Bailey was the No. 2 overall pick for a reason. He led Division I with 14.5 sacks in his final college season, and that pass-rush production translated immediately — he already has a sack on his preseason resume and has drawn praise for his run defense as well, which matters for a rookie edge rusher who needs to be more than a situational pass-rush specialist to stay on the field.
The New York Jets gave him a clear runway to produce right away, and the odds board reflects that confidence, with Bailey sitting as the clear favorite ahead of a talented group of Ohio State defenders — Rueben Bain Jr., Arvell Reese, and Sonny Styles — who will all factor into the conversation but are working through more crowded depth charts. Bailey’s combination of draft pedigree, early production, and a clean path to snaps makes him our pick.
Comeback Player of the Year: Patrick Mahomes
This one comes down to health and opportunity lining up at the same time. Mahomes tore his ACL and LCL last season, limiting him to 14 games, but by all accounts he’s been full-go since late July and hasn’t missed a practice heading into the season. Voters for this award tend to reward the player whose absence was most keenly felt and whose return restores a team to contention, and Mahomes checks both boxes for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Jayden Daniels and Kyler Murray both have real cases as quarterbacks returning from their own injury-shortened seasons, and Aaron Donald’s unretirement adds an interesting storyline on the defensive side. But Mahomes brings the largest platform, the clearest health trajectory, and a roster that’s built to compete for a title the moment he’s back to full speed. When the recovery is this clean and the stakes are this visible, the market and the voters tend to align — and we think that holds here.
As always, these are our early reads based on where rosters, health, and opportunity stand heading into Week 1. The value in award markets tends to move fastest in the first few weeks of the season, so it’s worth revisiting these as the picture sharpens.