Approach-Too-Early NFL Awards: Who Are the Leaders For Every Prime Honor?

NFL coaches, spoiled by decades of 16-game seasons, liked the simple fractions that allowed them to tell their teams a season was neatly split into four quarters, each a portion-controlled four games to evaluate and move on from.

We live in a 17-game world now, not so readily quartered, but we can still stop after four games, ignore the valid “small sample size” warnings and look at the 2025 NFL season.

Teams — and players — are not bound to finish as who they’ve been so far. A year ago, the Philadelphia Eagles were 2-2 and coming off a 17-point loss, and they would go 16-1 the rest of the way and win a championship. The wheels can come off a promising start, and others can overcome a rough patch out of the gates to have amazing seasons.

But here, after four games, we’re identifying the early leaders for the NFL’s big awards. This is the top of the third in a baseball game, where you haven’t even gotten up for a hot dog yet. This is Iowa and New Hampshire, and nobody should be dropping out of the race. But here we go, looking closely at who’s leading the field on Lap 51 of the Daytona 500.

Last year’s MVP race was down to the wire between Allen and Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, but the Ravens are 1-3. So, even though Jackson has 10 touchdowns against one interception, a solid 9.1 yards per pass attempt, it’s hard to give it to him.

Reasonably, this comes down to the leaders of the NFL’s two remaining unbeatens, the Bills and the Eagles. Allen has seven touchdown passes against one pick, and he has another three touchdowns rushing. Buffalo has scored at least 30 points in each of its wins, and it ranks second in both scoring and total offense.

The Eagles are a wobblier 4-0, winning all four by a single score, so Jalen Hurts isn’t seen as being as dominant. He doesn’t have a single turnover, with five passing touchdowns and four rushing scores, but the Eagles feel like last year’s Kansas City Chiefs, talented and fortunate enough to keep winning close games.

We don’t want to make the MVP a quarterback award (the last time a non-QB won the AP MVP award was Adrian Peterson in 2012), but there isn’t a compelling candidate outside of the passers right now. So we’ll give this to Allen at this moment, but so much can change in the next three months. The Eagles go to the Bills in Week 17, and that could have two of the league’s best MVP candidates going head-to-head, perhaps in a Super Bowl preview.

Again, we don’t want this to be the consolation prize with only non-quarterbacks considered, but it’s where the award is now, and that probably only changes if a non-quarterback gets a serious look for MVP honors.

The league’s top two backs have been Taylor and the Bills’ James Cook, both over 400 rushing yards. Taylor leads the league with 414 and has a slightly better average at 5.4 per carry; Cook has one more total touchdown. It’s certainly more surprising that the Colts are 3-1 than it is that the Bills are 4-0, and Taylor has been central in Indianapolis’ strong start.

Los Angeles Rams receiver Puka Nacua has been ridiculously prolific, leading the league by a wide margin with 42 catches for 503 yards — he’s on pace for 178 catches for 2,137 yards, breaking both NFL single-season records. He also only has one touchdown, and it’s hard to imagine giving OPOY to someone with, say, four touchdowns at the end of the year. When Calvin Johnson set the NFL receiving record with 1,964 yards in 2012, he didn’t get a single MVP vote and got two votes out of 50 in Offensive Player of the Year voting.

We’ll also give mention to Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who has six touchdown catches in four weeks. If he could get to 20 touchdown catches — that’s only happened twice, ever (Randy Moss had 23 in 2007, Jerry Rice had 22 in 1987) — puts you in the conversation for bigger awards. We go crazy for 2,000-yard rushers, and that’s happened nine times, by comparison.

We’ll give the nod to Taylor here, but you can make a case for Buffalo having an MVP and OPOY in the same backfield.

This is wide-open after four games. Hutchinson has come back from injury and returned to elite play — four sacks and two forced fumbles, and he’s Pro Football Focus’ second-highest-rated edge rusher, behind the Green Bay Packers’ Micah Parsons, who has 2.5 sacks.

We also want to keep an eye on Buffalo’s Joey Bosa, who has four forced fumbles in four games in addition to two sacks. The NFL single-season record for forced fumbles is 10. Charles Tillman had 10 in 2012, and props if you remember that the Giants’ Osi Umenyiora had 10 in 2010. This tends to be an edge rusher award, though, and there hasn’t been an amazing linebacker or defensive back to change that in the first month of the season.

So Hutchinson gets our nod, but all it takes is one big game. Myles Garrett is stuck on another bad Cleveland Browns team, but he has four sacks and a league-best eight tackles for loss and is definitely in the conversation.

With a down year for rookie quarterbacks, this is up for grabs. No running back has won this since Saquon Barkley in 2018, with two receivers (Ja’Marr Chase in 2021, Garrett Wilson in 2022) breaking up the quarterback pipeline.

Egbuka has been spectacular, with four touchdowns in the Bucs’ 3-1 start, including three in close late-comeback wins against the Atlanta Falcons and Houston Texans. He has twice as many touchdown catches as any other rookie and leads all rookies in receiving yards, looking like a gem of a pick from 19th overall for Tampa Bay general manager Jason Licht.

Las Vegas Raiders running back Ashton Jeanty had a monster game Sunday after a quiet first three games, and a few more like Sunday and this might be his award to lose. We’ll also mention Los Angeles Chargers rookie Omarion Hampton, who’s averaged 5.0 yards per carry in their 3-1 start and will have a huge role with Najee Harris’ injury.

This is easily the most “it’s way too early” of the awards. No rookie in the league has more than one sack and only five have interceptions, so it’s hard to evaluate much in terms of on-field production. Carter has a half-sack for the Giants, but is PFF’s No. 2 rookie edge rusher, behind only the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Jack Sawyer. In terms of splash plays, we should mention Falcons safety Xavier Watts, who has two interceptions in his first four NFL games. Browns linebacker Carson Schwesinger leads all rookies with 31 tackles and has a sack. The Rams’ Jared Verse had only one sack through six games last year, then really turned things up, so it’s normal not to have an obvious front-runner here a month into their first seasons.

Coach of the Year: Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks

This tends to recognize success above expectation, and of the 11 NFL teams who are 3-1 or better, only four weren’t projected to have winning records by oddsmakers entering the season — the Seahawks and Steelers had 8.5 wins as their over-under, and the Colts and Jacksonville Jaguars were at 7.5.

You can make a good case for the Colts’ Shane Steichen or the Jaguars’ Liam Coen. Indy’s offense has been a surprise success with Daniel Jones, and the Jaguars are impressively the best turnover margin team in the NFL, forcing 13 in four games and committing only four for a plus-9 margin.

I think the Seahawks have been the most impressive. They’re 3-1, and they have the league’s second-best point differential at plus-44, with a convincing win over the Steelers. The NFC West is 11-5 to start the season, so divisional games could be the difference in which one of those teams gets to host a playoff game. Sam Darnold leads the NFL at 9.1 yards per attempt, and Klint Kubiak’s offense has looked sharp in his first month in Seattle — wild to think he’s on his fifth team in five seasons.

This is tricky, in that the AP’s criteria for Comeback Player of the Year stipulates that the player must be coming back from injury, and not, say, just a case of crippling mediocrity. So that takes someone like Daniel Jones off the table, even though he’d be compelling in a “most improved player” sense of the award.

Among those actually returning from injury, McCaffrey has done well. He’s second in the NFL in yards from scrimmage, rushing for 225 and adding another 305 receiving, helping the 49ers push through this year’s wave of injuries to a 3-1 start.

If Sunday night is a win and not a tie, you could put Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott here. He leads the NFL with 1,119 passing yards, and has returned to form, but probably needs Dallas to be in playoff contention to win this. Hutchinson, our pick for Defensive Player of the Year, will get votes here as well. To be honest, we just didn’t want to give two of these to the same guy.

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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