I trust Lamar Jackson at his word that he doesn’t worry about MVP awards — the ones he wins and the ones he doesn’t.

But Jackson ought to leave an empty space on the shelf all year long as a reminder of what, in just about any other year, would have been his.

After roughly half a day of trying to understand the mental calculus of how Jackson could be a first-team All-Pro quarterback over Buffalo’s Josh Allen but an MVP runner-up to him, my brain hurts. It didn’t make sense to me at the end of the regular season, when the votes were cast, and it doesn’t make sense to me now. It’s the first time since 1987, when the MVP and first-team All-Pro were split between two quarterbacks — John Elway and Joe Montana. (Peyton Manning and Steve McNair shared the 2003 MVP when Manning was first-team All-Pro and McNair was second team.)

How does a guy who passed for more yards, ran for more yards, threw 13 more touchdowns (and two fewer interceptions) and won head to head lose the MVP race to Allen? The Bills had one more victory than the Ravens in the regular season in a much weaker division. Allen had 12 rushing touchdowns to Jackson’s 4 but still ceded the edge in total touchdowns (45 to 40).

Just because Allen seems like the kind of quarterback who should have an MVP to his name doesn’t mean he should get this one over a player who clearly had a better season.

The term “valuable” is intended to be fungible, so it’s not surprising some voters would determine Allen would be “more valuable” to his team than Jackson, but the fishy part is how Jackson somehow earned 30 first-team All-Pro votes to just 23 first-place tallies in the MVP vote. The explanations for the vote splitting defy credulity.

I respect that the voters labored over the process, but I wonder why the subjectivity of Allen’s case weighed so heavily in his favor over Jackson’s cold, hard stats — the same kind of stats detractors kvetched he didn’t put up in his last MVP season. The more people explain themselves, the more confusing it gets.

The Ringer’s Lindsay Jones, for example, decided Allen’s highlights were more “impactful” than Jackson’s, which is why she split her vote, giving Jackson the nod at All-Pro but Allen the MVP. But she also thought Allen’s statistics suffered from a schematic shift making him less of the offensive focal point. “Allen was always able to turn on the superhero switch when he wanted to and when the Bills needed a clutch play, but in 2024, the Bills’ first option wasn’t ‘hey Josh, just go do something.’”

ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky acknowledged splitting his vote in the same way, saying Allen had more value for his team than any other candidate. I’ve never appreciated Terps alum and former Raven Dominique Foxworth more than when he called out the argument: “It feels like you’re trying to find a semantics trapdoor so you can give this to him, and that to them, because you don’t want to say what you actually want to say: Lamar Jackson had the best season this year.”

It’s hard to feel satisfied by these explanations — Jackson was the better quarterback, yet Allen was intangibly more “valuable.”

The Derrick Henry factor probably counted against Jackson, but it shouldn’t have. We know that, without Henry, Jackson is a two-time MVP who has led the Ravens to a top-five rushing offense seven seasons in a row. Without an elite quarterback, a Henry-led team looks like the 2023 Tennessee Titans, who went 6-11.

Although it’s tempting to highlight that a white quarterback with lesser stats somehow outperformed his Black counterpart in the vote, I don’t believe that’s what kept a third MVP trophy out of Jackson’s hands. After all, Jackson beat out Allen last season with less impressive passing stats (aside from Allen’s 18 interceptions), albeit with a better record.

The rogue factor, in my opinion — besides a weird desire to make sure Allen got an MVP award in his stellar career — is rooted in something that voters probably would deny but is the defining issue of Jackson’s national perception: his playoff performances.

As Jackson was putting together a record-setting season this year, there were largely only two national discussions about him. 1. He was having an amazing year. 2. None of it would matter if he couldn’t get it done in the playoffs again. Wide-platform broadcast shows, by necessity, erase nuance and advance the most digestible storylines about players and teams. In Jackson’s case, his label, until further notice, is he doesn’t show up in games that matter.

To be clear, I think Jackson is one of the best regular-season big-game quarterbacks there is — both comeback wins against Cincinnati and victories over Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh and Houston this year only add to his string of incredible performances against playoff-caliber opponents. But the impression those games leave is fleeting compared to his postseason disappointments against Tennessee and Kansas City in years past.

If that’s all anyone talks about in the wider public consciousness, that’s who Jackson becomes in everyone’s mind. Punditry has had the net effect of diminishing his regular-season accomplishments, which are frankly substantial, and putting him a tier below Allen in the opinions of many observers.

Any and all arguments that Allen is better than Jackson are almost exclusively about postseason performance. Allen is 7-6 with 25 touchdowns and 4 interceptions, while Jackson is 3-5 with 10 touchdowns and 7 interceptions. Most critically, Allen’s Bills have beaten Jackson’s Ravens in both playoff meetings. Even the most passionate Baltimore fan has to admit Allen has proven himself more in the playoffs.

That being said, Jackson was a dropped 2-point conversion from possibly changing the story about how he has come up short in January. I don’t think the narrative about Jackson should matter to the MVP, a regular-season award, but I also believe it does. In the realm of subjective criteria, it seems possible some voters would favor the more “reliable” player than Jackson, who is doing things we’ve never seen before. Admittedly, Allen played well against the top-seeded Chiefs and Lions in the regular season to bolster that reputation.

That subtext should not matter in an MVP discussion, but I’m not surprised that it seems to have influenced what history should remember as a slight for an all-time great season. Jackson is no stranger to slights, from the beginning of his career when it was suggested he should switch to wide receiver to critics labeling him a running back lining up at the quarterback position. This year, his best passing year ever, he couldn’t beat the guy who doubled as the Bills’ goal-line rusher.

The blank space in his trophy case would serve as a reminder of how many minds he still has to change, no matter how incredible he’s been so far.

But I suspect, in Jackson’s mind, it’s not a third MVP he’s holding the spot for. Only a Lombardi Trophy will turn the tide of public opinion.