Who are the leading NFL MVP candidates after four weeks?
Josh Allen has entered the top-five discussionIt's been over a decade since Peyton Manning became the NFL's last back-to-back Most Valuable Player, winning the award for the third and fourth time in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
Since then, Manning has won his record fifth NFL MVP Award. Both Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers have won the award multiple times as well, but no one has won it in consecutive years.
In many ways, the NFL MVP is a narrative-based award. Sure, it helps to simply be the most dominant quarterback in the league in a given year, but your odds of winning said award increase dramatically if you're the best player in the league during a breakout season or one where you bounce back from an injury.
Brady, arguably the most accomplished player in the history of the sports, has three NFL MVPs, but has never won the award in back-to-back years. Rodgers, perhaps the most talented quarterback in NFL history, has won the award twice, but not in consecutive years.
There's a good chance that Patrick Mahomes, the 2018 NFL MVP, will eventually win the award in consecutive seasons, though the second half of which, obviously, can't be in 2020 because he didn't win the award a season ago.
In all likelihood, 2020 will not put a halt to the streak of years without a repeat winner as NFL MVP. Because while Lamar Jackson is on the bubble of this discussion, it would take quite a bit of work for him to climb back to the top and win the award for a second consecutive year: