Ranking the last 10 AP MVP award-winning seasons from best to worst

Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

Winning the AP MVP in the NFL is the highest individual honor that a football player can achieve in a single season. To hoist that trophy is to be remembered as, hands down, the greatest player in the entire league for at least a 16-game stretch. Thus, this ranking of the previous 10 winners of the award will, obviously, be filled with a lot of highly-talented players.

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However, not all MVP seasons are created equal and some are definitely more impressive than others. In the last 10 years the award has been given to a quarterback seven times and a running back three times. Some people believe that the award should have a more diverse list of positions, but in today’s game scoring is king, and those two positions score the most.

I bet that you can name the most of the AP MVP winners of the last decade, although one or two of the names may surprise you. Spoiler: there were only six different players that won the award over the last 10 years and the seven awards won by quarterbacks were split between only three signal callers. So there will be a few players repeated on this list, but I’m sure you already knew that.

The NFC North and the AFC West are the only two divisions to have players from two separate teams win an AP MVP award in the last decade. Although the NFC North boasts the most MVP seasons (3) of any division in the league since 2005.

Since the ‘greatness’ of these seasons is subjective, as some rosters were stronger than others, I relied heavily on statistics to create this ranking. The numbers tell the true story and leave out hyperbole and biased opinions. I wanted this examination of the last decade’s MVP-winners to be as objective and factually based as possible.

Wondering who has been put together the best AP MVP season of the last decade in the NFL? You’ve come to the right place.

Next: Ranking the Last 10 MVP Seasons