New England Patriots
Maye finished just one first-place vote behind Matthew Stafford in the voting.
Drake Maye finished second in NFL MVP honors on Thursday. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
SAN FRANCISCO — Drake Maye has a shot at winning the Lombardi Trophy on Sunday in Santa Clara.
But the Patriots QB won’t be leaving the Bay Area with the NFL’s Most Valuable Player Award.
The 23-year-old Patriots star finished second in the voting for MVP behind Rams QB Matthew Stafford on Thursday — ending a two-man race that dominated NFL award discourse over the last few months of the 2025 season.
It was narrow margin separating Stafford and Maye. Stafford earned 24 first-place votes (366 points), while Maye earned 23 (361). Josh Allen also secured two first-place votes, while Justin Herbert earned the last first-place vote.
AP NFL MVP
1. Matthew Stafford 366 points, 24 first-place votes
2. Drake Maye 361, 23
3. Josh Allen 91, 2
4. Christian McCaffrey 71, 0
5. Trevor Lawrence 49, 0
Justin Herbert got the other first-place vote.
— Rob Maaddi (@RobMaaddi) February 6, 2026
The 2025 NFL MVP race was the closest since Peyton Manning and Steve McNair shared the award in 2003.
Maye went from a promising — albeit raw — prospect in 2024 to one of the top playmakers in the NFL in the span of a single year.
The No. 3 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft was one of the primary conduits in New England’s improbable run to Super Bowl LX — leading the Patriots from a four-win 2024 campaign to a 14-3 record and the club’s first AFC East crown since 2019.
Maye led an explosive and efficient offense in Foxborough this past season, throwing for 4,394 yards (fourth in the NFL), 31 touchdowns (third) and committing just eight turnovers.
Maye led the NFL in both completion percentage (72.0 percent) and QBR (77.1), while also rushing for 450 yards and four touchdowns.
Stafford, 37, also stuffed the stat sheet this season. The veteran QB led the NFL in both passing yards (4,707) and touchdowns (46) while also throwing eight interceptions.
The writing was seemingly on the wall that Maye was going to come up short in the voting for MVP after it was announced that he earned Second Team All-Pro honors in January — while Stafford earned First-Team nods.
Typically, the MVP winner is named first-team All-Pro. Only two players were named MVP after failing to receive first-team All-Pro honors since 2000 — Steve McNair (2003) and Allen (2024).
While Maye’s MVP candidacy could have been undercut by both Stafford’s own stats and narratives regarding New England’s lighter regular-season schedule, former Patriots running back Damien Harris argued last month that Maye did more with less this season.
“Not only does he have 14 touchdowns in the low red zone to Davante Adams, he also is throwing to one of the best receivers in the National Football League at Puka Nacua, who is at the tops of the receiving list for almost every statistical category,” Harris said of Stafford on CBS. “Drake Maye is throwing to who?
“Thirty-two year-old Stefon Diggs, the running backs, … getting the tight ends involved. He’s getting it to everybody is the point. There’s no real superstar pass-catcher for this team, but yet Drake Maye still gets the ball to everybody.”
ESPN NFL writer Mina Kimes — who is a voter for MVP and admitted that she voted for Maye — also believes Maye’s underlying metrics made him her choice for the league’s top player.
“From a dominance perspective, Drake Maye was better than Matthew Stafford in just about every meaningful statistic,” Kimes said on ESPN’s “First Take”. “QBR, EPA per dropback, success rate. He had the highest completion percentage in the NFL. He was first in all of those, despite having a high average depth of target. On top of that, he was the more efficient quarterback. He also brought an element of rushing you just don’t get from Matthew Stafford.”
Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
Get the latest Boston sports news
Receive updates on your favorite Boston teams, straight from our newsroom to your inbox.
