FALL 2022

AUTHORS

Ryan S. Brill, University of Pennsylvania
Ryan Weisman, University of Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT

The NFL MVP award is chosen each year by a panel of 50 sportswriters who are selected by the Associated Press. As the MVP is chosen by humans who do not necessarily base their decision on statistics, but on watching all the games and talking to coaches and players, it is natural to wonder whether there is a mathematical rule that can describe the MVP selection process. Hence in this paper, we create a logistic regression model to predict the NFL Quarterback­MVP. Our algorithm predicts the correct Quarterback MVP in each year since 2003 except 2009 and 2015. In 2009, our model chooses Brees over Manning, and in 2015, our model chooses Palmer over Newton. Perusing articles from 2009 and 2015 reveals that many people in the media agreed with our model that Brees and Palmer were snubbed.