In a surprise, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen beat out Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson to win his first NFL MVP on Thursday night’s NFL awards show. And on Friday morning, Dan Orlovsky’s reasoning for voting for Allen left his ESPN colleague Domonique Foxworth less than satisfied.
The debate between Allen and Jackson went through much of the season, but by the end of the 2024 campaign, the edge in pretty much every statistical category went to Jackson. But whether it’s because voters felt that Allen did more with less… or they were looking for a reason not to give Jackson his third MVP award without much postseason success to show for it is currently up for debate.
That was the case on Friday morning’s episode of Get Up where Dan Orlovsky admitted he voted for Josh Allen for NFL MVP but Lamar Jackson for first-team All-Pro quarterback. While trying to split hairs over the definition of “valuable” you could already tell he was losing Domonique Foxworth and Jeff Saturday. So when Mike Greenberg turned to Foxworth, he called out Orlovsky for “splitting the baby.”
.@danorlovsky7 explains why he voted for Josh Allen as the MVP and Lamar Jackson as the first-team All-Pro QB 👀 pic.twitter.com/cIAGHUH8rd
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) February 7, 2025
“I’m glad we have Dan here to defend him and the people who did this but it does feel like you’re trying to split the baby,” Foxworth said. “You don’t got the heart to say what you actually want to say. I think both of them had MVP caliber seasons, but it feels like you are trying to find some little semantics trap door. You can give this to him and that to them, because you don’t actually want to say what you really want to say.”
After a debate about the award and it being the Most Valuable Player award, Foxworth then went in on the semantics of the trophy being able to be twisted so that each individual voter can define “valuable” for themselves.
“This is the semantics foolishness that we do. This is what you do. You say ‘value’ and the cool thing about value gives us on these shows a way to argue because you can twist it and turn it any way you want. Normally, MVP means ‘who is the best damn dude in the league’ and to me, obviously, Josh Allen had an MVP caliber season, but the best damn dude in the league this year was the guy who was first-team All-Pro,” Foxworth concluded.
The vote was close, Josh Allen received 383 points and Lamar Jackson received 362 points. Allen received 27 first place votes (including Dan Orlovsky) while Jackson received 23. But if this was Domonique Foxworth’s reaction to Dan Orlovsky trying to make everyone happy by trying to parcel out a difference between best and most valuable, what would he have to say to former Chicago Bears quarterback Jim Miller… who voted Jackson 4th on his MVP ballot?
