The Quick Answer
The shortest price on the 2026 NFL MVP board belongs to Josh Allen at +600, which converts to about a 14% chance. Behind him sit Lamar Jackson at +800, Joe Burrow at +850 and Patrick Mahomes at +1000, per FOX Sports as of September 4, 2026. Of those four, Mahomes is the one whose price and whose documented situation on the field are pulling in opposite directions: he tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee in December, and his own team's recovery estimate put a Week 1 return at the near edge of the window. The topic asked for two such names; the reporting I have supports one, and I say below what is missing for a second.
The Numbers
| Player | Odds, as listed September 4, 2026 | Implied chance |
|---|---|---|
| Josh Allen | +600 | 14.3% |
| Lamar Jackson | +800 | 11.1% |
| Joe Burrow | +850 | 10.5% |
| Patrick Mahomes | +1000 | 9.1% |
What Changed Around The Fourth Name
Mahomes tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee during a Week 15 loss to the Chargers on December 14, 2025, and had surgery the following night, performed by Dr. Dan Cooper in Dallas, according to NFL.com. The Chiefs set the target at nine months, which would land on the 2026 opener, CBS Sports reported on December 18, 2025. Rick Burkholder, the Chiefs' vice president of sports medicine, put it this way: "Ballpark on this is nine months, but it could be a month or two more, a month or two less."
The offense around him is also new. Kansas City named Eric Bieniemy its offensive coordinator on January 23, 2026, the team announced, returning him to a job he held there from 2018 through 2022. Bieniemy described his approach five days later: "We'll be disciplined and detailed in everything in how we handle our business, and there's a standard of performance and a standard of excellence that will be expected." His remarks are on the team site.
What That Means For Reading The Board
A +1000 price is the fourth shortest on this board. It is priced above dozens of other names but below three quarterbacks with no comparable question hanging over them in this reporting. That is the mismatch worth pointing at. The recovery estimate is a range with two months of give on either side, and Bieniemy's arrival means the play caller is new even if the quarterback is on time. Both of those cut in the same direction, and neither is settled by anything published as of September 4. What the board does with that is the reader's call, not mine.
What Is Still In Doubt
Two things, and I will name them rather than paper over them.
First, the second mismatch. Nothing in my sourcing covers the on-field situation for Allen, Jackson or Burrow: no injury designations, no practice reports, no depth chart or workload notes, no coaching comments. Naming a second player without that would be a guess dressed as analysis, so I am not doing it.
Second, the award itself. I have no sourced information on how the 2026 MVP vote is run, who casts ballots, when they are cast, or whether any rule changed this year. That matters because the vote, not the season, decides the award, and a board is only a price on how that vote lands.
About The Numbers
The four prices above come from a FOX Sports article published September 4, 2026, and they are quoted as that article listed them. They are American odds: a plus number is what a $100 stake would return in profit if that player wins, so +600 returns $600 on $100 and +1000 returns $1,000. The implied chance column is that same number converted to a percentage, calculated as 100 divided by the odds plus 100, so +600 becomes 100 divided by 700, or 14.3%. On a full MVP board, that column adds to more than 100% because the prices include the operator's margin, the cushion built into every listing, so the percentages for all listed players sum past the 100% that real probabilities have to obey. These four alone come to about 45% because they are only the top of the board and the rest of the field is not shown here. The source gave one dated snapshot and no prior-day or movement column, so no price change is shown.
