December 11th, 2025
By Stephen Juza
With just a few weeks to go, the NFL MVP award is a competition between two quarterbacks remaining: Matthew Stafford and Drake Maye. As these quarterbacks continue leading their teams’ to the number one seed in their conference, other contenders last week have been fading from contention behind injuries, unexpected losses, and a general downturn in play. While we look at our updated MVP ranking for Week 14, consider looking at the melbet download apk to look at various games throughout the week.
Matthew Stafford - Los Angeles Rams, Quarterback
Stafford continues to lead the way off the back of his best season of his seventeen year career. Stafford and the Rams got back to their winning ways this week with a 45-17 win over divisional rival Arizona Cardinals. Stafford threw another three touchdowns in victory, bringing his league leading total to 35 on the season. With four games to go, Stafford has a good chance of surpassing his career-high of 41.
But it’s not just touchdowns where he’s having one of his best seasons of his career. He’s also been more protective with the football in 2025. Last season was his career-low in interceptions for a full season (8), but through twelve games he’s only thrown four this season.
The Rams will need Stafford to continue his high level of play for the remainder of the season. The Seattle Seahawks are hot on the Rams’ tail for both the division lead and the first overall seed in the playoffs. The Rams have the tie-breaker currently based on their prior win in Week 11. The two rivals will face off in Week 16 for what could determine the first seed in the playoffs.
Drake Maye - New England Patriots, Quarterback
We continue to have Maye behind Stafford in the race for the MVP, it is still well within reach with a strong finish to his second NFL season. While Stafford may have the best personal story for the award, it will be hard for voters to deny the New England Patriots having the best team story for the award. This time last season, the Patriots were listless and one of the worst teams in the league. Less than a year later, the team has life and a bright future ahead of them. While new head coach Mike Vrabel will have a lot to do with that, it’s hard to deny the night-and-day impact of Maye’s improvement.
While improvement would be expected between someone’s first and second season, Maye is leading the league in completion percentage, second in passing yards, and has thrown eight more touchdowns than all of last season. And he has managed this while cutting down his interceptions. The Patriots will continue to leave some skeptical of how good they actually are this season because of their schedule, but the worst-to-first story in the AFC East is a compelling one for voters.
The Field
As the season draws closer to an end, the field of contenders has dramatically thinned. Perennial candidate Patrick Mahomes suffered one of his toughest losses of his career this week at home against Houston, all but eliminating him and the Chiefs from the playoffs for the first time in his career. Daniel Jones, once one of the most surprising stories of the 2025 NFL season, unfortunately tore his Achilles’ tendon this week, leading to a heartbreaking end to his season. And while reigning MVP Josh Allen and the Bills had a much-needed victory this week over the Bengals, his candidacy likely will only be boosted by a strong finish to the season with victories over the Patriots and the Eagles with four games to go. A strong finish like that could potentially move the team into yet another AFC East title, and with a little help, the first overall seed.