The Jonathan Taylor MVP Case in Five Minutes
Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson was the last non-quarterback to claim the NFL’s MVP award — that was back in 2012.
Over the past decade, analytics, rule changes, and numerous other factors have increasingly made the NFL a pass-first league. Unsurprisingly, in recent years the league’s most prestigious individual performance award has gone strictly to the game’s best passers.
At a certain point however, the dedication to the pass goes too far and opportunities start to open up for the league’s best rushers. With NFL defenses setting their sites on the Patrick Mahomes’ and Aaron Rodgers’ of the world, Jonathan Taylor has feasted on defenses that view his position as an afterthought.
Taylor currently leads the league in rushing yards (1518), and the gap between him and the second-ranked player (Joe Mixon) is an astounding 424 yards. He’s embarrassing any defenders that dare cross his path, and in just his second year in the league, he’s become the focal point of a red-hot Indianapolis team.
Indianapolis entered the 2021 season with high aspirations, but after dropping their first three games and staring at an 0–3 record, they realized things needed to change and change quickly.
Colts’ Head Coach Frank Reich is one of the better coaches in the league, and he’s largely viewed as an offensive mastermind. He’s great at making complex adjustments to give his team an edge, but the biggest adjustment he made to snap that three-game losing streak was a simple one — get Jonathan Taylor more touches.
Through those first three weeks, Taylor posted rushing totals of just 56, 51, and 64 yards, and he never managed to find the end zone.
At that point, Reich had seen enough.
He took the training wheels off of Taylor and essentially put the entire Colts offense on the shoulders of his star back. From week four onward, Indy has run the ball more often while simultaneously giving Taylor a larger portion of those attempts, and the results have been fantastic:
Numbers alone shouldn’t determine a player’s worthiness of MVP honors, but they’re certainly part of the equation.
With Taylor, the numbers point to a direct correlation between his involvement in the Colts’ offense and the team’s overall level of success. If that’s not the definition of an MVP, I’m not sure what is.
The main argument against Taylor’s MVP case doesn’t have anything to do with his talent either — it all surrounds the position he plays. Many will argue running backs are about as valuable as dial-up internet in 2021, but multiple data points indicate this is no longer the case.
If we look at the teams who incorporate analytics into their decision making the most (according to ESPN’s NFL Analytics Survey), we notice the most analytically-inclined teams are some of the run-heaviest as well:
All of these teams, with the exception of the Giants (who are… well… the Giants…), boast a record of .500 or better while simultaneously ranking in the top half of the league in run rate. This includes the Packers, who have a three-time MVP playing quarterback, and the Ravens, who have seen every decent running back on their roster suffer a season-ending injury.
NFL teams have an abundance of resources at their disposal to crunch numbers, gather data, and inform their decision making. The teams utilizing these resources most often appear to have found a market inefficiency that’s suggesting they run the ball at a higher rate.
This is contrary to where the league had been heading in recent years, and it begs the question — did we reach a tipping point where the passing game has become overvalued?
If we use Indy’s matchup with Buffalo as a case study for this argument, the answer is a resounding yes.
On a per-game basis, the Bills rank 2nd best in points allowed (17.4), 1st in yards allowed (287.9), and 1st in pass yards allowed (175.6). They’re arguably the best defense in the entire NFL, but the one chink in their otherwise impenetrable armor is a rush defense that ranks just 16th in yards allowed (112.4).
Philosophically, Buffalo is largely ok with this weakness. They built their defense to slow down Mahomes and the rest of the league’s high-octane passing attacks, and they’ve largely been successful in doing so.
However, this success against the pass doesn’t come without a cost. The Bills are not well-equipped to stop a run-heavy team like the Colts, and when Jonathan Taylor came to town back in week 11, he had himself a day.
Against the Bills’ defense, Taylor rushed for 185 yards and 5 touchdowns. I repeat, 5 TOUCHDOWNS!
Only three quarterbacks in the league have thrown for five touchdowns in a game this year, and none have thrown for more. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how you score as long as your team manages to find the end zone. Whether you’re throwing the ball or handing it off, the end result is six points when your team crosses the goal line.
Taylor’s dominance on the ground may not be as flashy as what some of the league’s top quarterbacks are doing, but that doesn’t mean his play this year is any less impressive.
He’s not only putting up gaudy statistics and dominant individual performances, he’s also causing teams like the Bills to question the entire philosophy their defenses are built around.
Quarterback is still the most important position in the NFL, but that doesn’t mean outliers can’t emerge at other positions and make just as large of an impact on their respective franchises. If the 2021 NFL season has proven anything, it’s proven that Jonathan Taylor is the definition of an outlier:
Taylor’s breaking the mold of what an MVP can look like, and he’s proving that a dominant run game can still serve as a recipe for success in today’s NFL. Whether he’s at the top of your MVP rankings or not, it’s time to stop removing him from consideration simply because of the position he plays.
