Dark Horse NFL MVP Candidates and the Super Bowl Rings That Never Were

The average age of a first-time NFL MVP-winning quarterback since 2000 is 27 years old, and this season five quarterbacks will turn exactly 27: Trevor Lawrence, Brock Purdy, Bo Nix, Tyler Shough, and Malik Willis. That stat, pulled from the betting pro show, frames the entire dark horse MVP discussion on this episode of the Tailgate. The hosts—Joey P., Derek Brown, and Andrew Erickson—spend the first half of the show making cases for quarterbacks outside the top tier of MVP betting odds, then pivot to a more wistful conversation about legendary players who never won a Super Bowl ring.

The Case for Dark Horse Quarterbacks

The MVP conversation starts with a hard constraint: since Adrian Peterson won in 2012, every single MVP has been a quarterback. Derek Brown makes this explicit early—betting on a non-quarterback is burning money. The award is a media-driven narrative prize, and the winner's team almost always wins at least 12 games. The only exception since 2013 is Matt Ryan's 2016 Falcons, who won 11.