Drake Maye Lost MVP By Five Points. The Market Still Doubts Him

Eight Models, One Name, And A Price That Disagrees

In February the Associated Press gave its Most Valuable Player award to Matthew Stafford by five points, 366 to 361. It was the closest MVP vote since Peyton Manning and Steve McNair tied for the award in 2003. The quarterback who lost it was 23 years old, had just thrown for 4,394 yards with 31 touchdowns against 8 interceptions on a 14-3 team, and would start the Super Bowl that same week.

Kalshi now lists 45 contracts on the 2026 award: 44 players, plus one that pays only if the vote ends in a tie. Drake Maye trades at 6.5 cents there. Four other names sit above him.

We handed eight AI models the same race and never showed them a price. Each got a data card built on August 22 from live sources: every player's 2025 production, every team's record and point differential, the complete 69-season list of past winners with the position each one played, the 2025 postseason results, and the league's injury ledger as it stood at 17:42 UTC that afternoon. Each model then had to return a number for all 44 players plus a catch-all bucket for anyone the market has not listed, with the whole board asked to add up to 100. The tie contract sits outside that arithmetic, because a tie is not mutually exclusive with the individual names, so nobody scored it.

All eight put Drake Maye first. The lowest number any of them gave him was 12.3%.

New to this corner of the market? Our step-by-step guide to NFL event contracts on Kalshi explains how these contracts settle and what a cent actually buys you.

What The Board Costs Right Now

• Venue: Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange, 18+, availability varies by state, as of August 2026
• The event: "MVP Winner?" (Kalshi event KXNFLMVP-27), 45 separate yes/no contracts
• The contract: each player market settles YES if he "wins the Pro Football AP Regular Season MVP in the 2026-27 season." Regular season only; the playoffs do not count. The forty-fifth contract settles YES only if the AP vote produces co-winners
• Settles: expected on or around March 14, 2027, once the AP announces
• Prices below as of: August 22, 2026, midpoint of the live bid and ask

Two things about this book are worth knowing before you read a single number. First, only 23 of the 45 contracts have a real bid behind them; the other 22 are one-sided, showing an ask at the minimum increment with nobody offering to buy. Second, the 45 midpoints add up to 115.5 cents rather than 100. That gap is the exchange's spread, and it means every quoted price is inflated by roughly 15% as a probability. Re-scaled to sum to 100, Maye's 6.5-cent quote is really the market saying about 5.6%.

The panel's numbers below are already probabilities, so that re-scaled figure is the honest thing to compare them against. Where we quote a gap, it is against the re-scaled fair value, not the raw cents.

The board is also busier than its prices suggest: about 9.4 million contracts of lifetime volume across the 45 markets, with roughly 8.7 million of them still open. The single most-traded name is not any of the favorites. It is Tyler Shough of the Saints, with about 868,000 contracts traded and a current quote of one cent bid, two cents asked.

The Board: All 45 Contracts

The narrow view first, built to read on a phone. Every model's individual number is in the table after it.

Name	Team	Pos	Kalshi	AI blend
Drake Maye	Patriots	QB	6.5¢	13.5%
Josh Allen	Bills	QB	10.5¢	9.7%
Matthew Stafford	Rams	QB	6.5¢	6.5%
Lamar Jackson	Ravens	QB	9.5¢	5.8%
Sam Darnold	Seahawks	QB	2.5¢	5.5%
Joe Burrow	Bengals	QB	9.5¢	5.1%
Trevor Lawrence	Jaguars	QB	2.5¢	5.0%
CJ Stroud	Texans	QB	1.5¢	4.0%
Caleb Williams	Bears	QB	6.5¢	4.0%
Bo Nix	Broncos	QB	2.5¢	4.0%
Brock Purdy	49ers	QB	4.5¢	3.6%
Jalen Hurts	Eagles	QB	2.5¢	3.5%
Patrick Mahomes	Chiefs	QB	6.5¢	3.5%
Jared Goff	Lions	QB	2.5¢	3.4%
Justin Herbert	Chargers	QB	8.5¢	2.6%
Jayden Daniels	Commanders	QB	3.5¢	2.5%
Jordan Love	Packers	QB	4.5¢	2.5%
Dak Prescott	Cowboys	QB	6.5¢	1.5%
Kyler Murray	Vikings	QB	1.5¢	1.2%
Christian McCaffrey	49ers	RB	0.5¢	0.9%
Baker Mayfield	Buccaneers	QB	1.5¢	0.8%
Jahmyr Gibbs	Lions	RB	0.5¢	0.7%
Tua Tagovailoa	Falcons	QB	0.5¢	0.7%
Jonathan Taylor	Colts	RB	0.5¢	0.6%
Bijan Robinson	Falcons	RB	0.5¢	0.5%
Saquon Barkley	Eagles	RB	0.5¢	0.5%
Jaxon Smith-Njigba	Seahawks	WR	0.5¢	0.5%
Daniel Jones	Colts	QB	0.5¢	0.5%
Aaron Rodgers	Steelers	QB	0.5¢	0.5%
Bryce Young	Panthers	QB	0.5¢	0.4%
Ja'Marr Chase	Bengals	WR	0.5¢	0.4%
Jaxson Dart	Giants	QB	1.5¢	0.3%
Puka Nacua	Rams	WR	0.5¢	0.3%
Michael Penix Jr	Falcons	QB	0.5¢	0.3%
Cam Ward	Titans	QB	1.5¢	0.3%
Myles Garrett	Rams	DE	0.5¢	0.3%
Ashton Jeanty	Las Vegas Raiders	RB	0.5¢	0.2%
Justin Jefferson	Vikings	WR	0.5¢	0.2%
CeeDee Lamb	Cowboys	WR	0.5¢	0.2%
Micah Parsons	Packers	DE	0.5¢	0.2%
Josh Jacobs	Packers	RB	0.5¢	0.2%
A.J. Brown	Patriots	WR	0.5¢	0.2%
Tyler Shough	Saints	QB	1.5¢	0.1%
JJ McCarthy	Vikings	QB	0.5¢	0.1%
Tie / co-winners	—	—	0.5¢	not scored

Every Seat's Number

Round-two figures, after each model read the other seven's anonymized reasoning and had the option to revise. The eight seats are Claude Fable, Claude Opus and Claude Sonnet, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Kimi K3, GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4. Each seat's board is normalized to sum to 100 before blending, so a model that handed back 101.3 does not get extra weight.

Name	Kalshi	AI blend	Claude Fable	Claude Opus	Claude Sonnet	GPT	Gemini	Kimi	GLM	DeepSeek
Drake Maye	6.5¢	13.5%	13.1%	14.5%	13.5%	13.5%	14.5%	12.5%	12.3%	17.8%
Josh Allen	10.5¢	9.7%	9.3%	10.0%	9.5%	9.5%	10.5%	9.0%	9.9%	10.8%
Matthew Stafford	6.5¢	6.5%	5.6%	5.5%	7.0%	6.5%	6.5%	6.5%	6.9%	6.1%
Lamar Jackson	9.5¢	5.8%	6.1%	5.7%	5.5%	6.0%	5.0%	6.0%	6.4%	4.6%
Sam Darnold	2.5¢	5.5%	4.7%	5.5%	7.0%	4.5%	7.5%	5.5%	4.4%	7.1%
Joe Burrow	9.5¢	5.1%	5.1%	4.5%	5.0%	5.5%	5.5%	5.0%	5.4%	4.6%
Trevor Lawrence	2.5¢	5.0%	4.7%	6.0%	5.0%	5.0%	5.5%	4.5%	5.4%	5.1%
CJ Stroud	1.5¢	4.0%	3.7%	3.2%	4.5%	4.2%	6.5%	4.0%	4.0%	4.1%
Caleb Williams	6.5¢	4.0%	3.7%	3.0%	4.5%	4.0%	4.5%	4.0%	4.0%	3.6%
Bo Nix	2.5¢	4.0%	3.7%	3.6%	4.5%	4.5%	3.0%	4.0%	4.0%	4.6%
Brock Purdy	4.5¢	3.6%	3.7%	3.8%	4.5%	3.5%	4.0%	3.5%	3.5%	3.1%
Jalen Hurts	2.5¢	3.5%	3.7%	3.2%	3.5%	3.5%	4.0%	3.5%	3.0%	3.6%
Patrick Mahomes	6.5¢	3.5%	3.7%	3.5%	4.0%	3.2%	3.5%	3.5%	4.0%	2.6%
Jared Goff	2.5¢	3.4%	3.3%	3.3%	3.5%	3.0%	3.5%	3.0%	4.0%	3.6%
Justin Herbert	8.5¢	2.6%	2.8%	2.8%	1.5%	2.5%	3.0%	2.5%	3.0%	2.1%
Jayden Daniels	3.5¢	2.5%	3.3%	2.6%	3.0%	2.5%	2.0%	3.0%	2.5%	1.1%
Jordan Love	4.5¢	2.5%	2.6%	2.6%	0.6%	2.0%	2.5%	2.5%	2.5%	2.1%
Dak Prescott	6.5¢	1.5%	1.9%	1.8%	1.0%	1.5%	1.5%	1.5%	1.5%	1.6%
Kyler Murray	1.5¢	1.2%	1.1%	1.5%	0.8%	1.2%	1.0%	1.0%	2.0%	1.6%
Christian McCaffrey	0.5¢	0.9%	0.8%	0.5%	0.9%	0.6%	0.7%	1.2%	1.0%	1.1%
Baker Mayfield	1.5¢	0.8%	1.4%	0.8%	0.5%	1.0%	0.8%	1.5%	0.5%	0.5%
Jahmyr Gibbs	0.5¢	0.7%	0.8%	0.8%	0.7%	0.8%	0.1%	0.8%	0.5%	0.4%
Tua Tagovailoa	0.5¢	0.7%	0.9%	0.5%	0.6%	0.8%	1.0%	0.8%	0.5%	0.2%
Jonathan Taylor	0.5¢	0.6%	0.6%	0.7%	0.5%	0.7%	0.1%	1.2%	0.5%	0.7%
Bijan Robinson	0.5¢	0.5%	0.7%	0.6%	0.3%	1.4%	0.1%	0.8%	0.5%	0.4%
Saquon Barkley	0.5¢	0.5%	0.6%	0.8%	1.0%	0.4%	0.1%	0.7%	0.5%	0.5%
Jaxon Smith-Njigba	0.5¢	0.5%	0.5%	0.5%	0.7%	0.8%	0.1%	0.7%	0.3%	0.5%
Daniel Jones	0.5¢	0.5%	0.6%	0.5%	0.3%	0.7%	0.2%	0.5%	1.0%	0.3%
Aaron Rodgers	0.5¢	0.5%	0.5%	0.8%	0.4%	0.5%	0.5%	1.5%	0.5%	0.5%
Bryce Young	0.5¢	0.4%	0.8%	0.3%	0.1%	0.4%	0.4%	0.5%	0.5%	0.3%
Ja'Marr Chase	0.5¢	0.4%	0.4%	0.5%	0.3%	0.4%	0.1%	0.4%	0.3%	0.2%
Jaxson Dart	1.5¢	0.3%	0.9%	0.7%	0.3%	0.4%	0.1%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%
Puka Nacua	0.5¢	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.6%	0.1%	0.5%	0.3%	0.2%
Michael Penix Jr	0.5¢	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.6%	0.2%	0.5%	0.3%	0.2%
Cam Ward	1.5¢	0.3%	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%
Myles Garrett	0.5¢	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.3%	0.2%	0.3%
Ashton Jeanty	0.5¢	0.2%	0.3%	0.5%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%	0.3%	0.1%	0.1%
Justin Jefferson	0.5¢	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%
CeeDee Lamb	0.5¢	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.3%	0.1%	0.1%
Micah Parsons	0.5¢	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
Josh Jacobs	0.5¢	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%
A.J. Brown	0.5¢	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%
Tyler Shough	1.5¢	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%
JJ McCarthy	0.5¢	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%
Unlisted field	—	2.0%	1.9%	2.2%	2.1%	1.6%	0.4%	1.0%	2.5%	2.8%
Every seat on this panel is graded against real market settlements — records to date: Claude Fable 82% on 576 graded calls · Claude Opus 83% on 646 graded calls · Claude Sonnet 82% on 624 graded calls · GPT 84% on 5,658 graded calls · Gemini 86% on 4,423 graded calls · Kimi 82% on 2,414 graded calls · GLM 81% on 2,437 graded calls · DeepSeek 80% on 2,462 graded calls. Recomputed daily; the full scoreboard is public.

The blend is the median of the eight seats, not the average, because a single outlier should not drag a 44-name board. Numbers are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Every one of them gets graded in public once the AP announces, alongside our full record on the model-verdict scoreboard.

More live boards from the same panel: the 2026 Patriots win-total board has New England's 11-or-more-wins contract at 43¢, the Comeback Player market has Patrick Mahomes out front at 36.5¢, and the 2027 Super Bowl board has the Rams on top at 15.5¢ with New England at 4.5¢. Prices fetched August 22, 2026.

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Drake Maye, Patriots: The Runner-Up Whose Roster Got Better

Every model on the panel built its board around one idea, and it is not complicated. MVP voters reward a quarterback who puts up an outlier statistical season on a team that wins a lot of games. In 2025, on both counts, Maye was already there.

His line: 4,394 passing yards, 31 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, a 113.5 passer rating, 72.0% completions, and 450 rushing yards across all 17 games. New England finished 14-3 with a plus-170 point differential, beat Denver 10-7 in the AFC Championship, and lost Super Bowl LX to Seattle 29-13.

Then the roster ledger did something the raw record does not show. A.J. Brown, who caught 78 passes for 1,003 yards and 7 touchdowns for Philadelphia in 2025, is now on the Patriots. The runner-up in the closest MVP vote in 22 years came back with a better receiving corps than the one he nearly won it with.

Maye alone pairs elite efficiency (113.5 rating, 31:8, 450 rush yards) with a 14-3 +170 team and a new WR1, so he leads a QB-dominated board. — Claude Opus

The panel's median lands him at 13.5%. The market, re-scaled for its spread, is at 5.6%. The gap runs to nearly eight points, the largest on the board by a wide margin: the next-biggest disagreement in either direction is under five points.

There is a real case on the other side, and the models named it themselves. Preseason favorites in a 44-man race rarely deserve a number that high before a snap is played, and the Patriots are coming off a Super Bowl loss with the whole league now game-planning for them. Claude Opus said flatly that it declined to go to 20% for exactly that reason. But the panel's disagreement was about how far above the market to go, not whether to go.

Matthew Stafford, Rams: The One Number Everyone Agrees On

The defending winner is the rarest thing on this board: a contract where the panel and the money land in the same place. Kalshi has Stafford at 6.5 cents, about 5.6% re-scaled. The panel's median is 6.5%.

The agreement hides an argument, though. Stafford's 2025 was enormous — 4,707 yards, 46 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, a 109.2 rating on a 12-5 Rams team with a plus-172 differential. On the raw statistics he would be the favorite. What holds him down is history: in 69 seasons, a defending MVP has repeated five times, roughly one year in 14. And the reason that rate is low is mechanical rather than mystical. Winning the award takes a career-outlier season and a top team record in the same year, and career-outlier seasons regress.

So the models tested the conditions instead of applying the bare rate. The Rams kept their cast and added Myles Garrett, which supports the team half. The other half is a 38-year-old in his 18th NFL season coming off 46 touchdown passes, with Puka Nacua carrying a groin designation on the league's August 22 ledger.

I test conditions rather than fatigue: the Rams kept the cast and added Garrett, so Stafford's team case survives, but 46 TDs at age 38 is a career outlier against 18 seasons of baseline. — Kimi

Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs: A Knee, A 6-11 Season, And A 6.5-Cent Price

Mahomes is the clearest example of what a price-blind panel is for. He is a two-time winner and one of the most recognizable quarterbacks in the sport, and the market has him tied for fifth at 6.5 cents. The panel has him thirteenth, at 3.5%.

What the models saw: 14 games played in 2025, 3,587 yards, 22 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, an 89.6 rating, and a Kansas City team that finished 6-11. On the league's August 22 ledger he is listed Questionable with a left knee ACL and surgery, and a return date of August 28. Week 1 of the 2026 season opens September 6, so the ledger has him back in time. It does not tell you what he will look like.

Six of the eight seats named him outright as the player the public overrates. One seat raised the counter-argument in the revision round, and it is worth the same attention: Kansas City's 6-11 came with a positive point differential of plus-34, which is the profile of a team that lost close games rather than one that collapsed.

I raised Mahomes to 3.5% after the point that 6-11 with +34 differential is close-game noise, not talent collapse, with an 8/28 return date that clears Week 1. — Claude Opus

If you want the market's own read on his health, it is priced elsewhere and it is not shy: the Comeback Player of the Year board has him at 36.5 cents, far and away its favorite. The crowd believes he plays. The panel's discount is about the MVP bar specifically, which needs a top team record, and Kansas City finished 2025 at 6-11.

Where The Panel Fades The Money

Five contracts carry a fade of two points or more against re-scaled fair value. Patrick Mahomes is one of them and has his own section above. The other four share a theme: a good quarterback whose 2025 team was not.

• Justin Herbert, Chargers. The board's biggest fade at 2.6% against a 7.4% fair value. He threw for 3,727 yards and 26 touchdowns, but also 13 interceptions on a 94.1 rating, and Los Angeles finished 11-6 with a plus-28 differential. Solid is not the shape this award rewards.
• Dak Prescott, Cowboys. 4,552 yards and 30 touchdowns is a real season. Dallas went 7-9-1 with a minus-40 differential. The panel puts him at 1.5% against 5.6%, and no seat went above 2.0%.
• Joe Burrow, Bengals. 5.1% against 8.2%. The fade here is the softest of the group because the models agree his 6-11 record was a health record: 8 games played, and a 100.7 rating in them.
• Lamar Jackson, Ravens. 5.8% against 8.2%. Same structure. Baltimore finished 8-9 on the season with a plus-26 point differential, and Jackson played 13 of those games at a 103.8 rating.

One more sits just under that line and is worth naming anyway. Caleb Williams of the Bears is at 4.0% against a 5.6% fair value. Chicago went 11-6 and he threw 27 touchdowns to 7 interceptions, but his 58.1% completion rate is the lowest of any quarterback in the top 15 of this board.

Where The Panel Pays Up

The overweights all live in the two-and-three-cent range, which is where a partition board hides its cheap contracts.

• Sam Darnold, Seahawks. 5.5% against a 2.2% fair value, the biggest overweight on the board in relative terms. Seattle went 14-3 with a league-best plus-191 differential and won Super Bowl LX. His 14 interceptions and 99.1 rating are why he is not higher, and seven of the eight seats raised one or both of those numbers unprompted.
• Trevor Lawrence, Jaguars. 5.0% against 2.2%. Jacksonville finished 13-4 with a plus-138 differential and he produced 38 total touchdowns, 29 through the air and 9 on the ground. Four of the eight seats listed him as a player the public underrates.
• CJ Stroud, Texans. 4.0% against 1.3%, the largest multiple on the board. Houston went 12-5 with a plus-109 differential while he missed three games.
• Bo Nix, Broncos. 4.0% against 2.2%. Denver tied for the league's best record at 14-3 with a plus-90 differential, and the market has him at two and three cents.

Dark Horses The Panel Won't Dismiss

A quarterback has won this award 13 years running and 48 times in 69 seasons. The last non-quarterback was Adrian Peterson in 2012. The panel priced that streak hard: all 15 non-quarterbacks on the board carry a combined 6.0% on the median.

But the seats did not zero them, and the reasons are specific.

• Christian McCaffrey, 49ers is the top non-quarterback at 0.9% against a 0.4% fair value. He is also the only name here with an MVP resume from last season: the AP tally had him fourth with 71 points, off 1,202 rushing yards, 102 receptions and 924 receiving yards for a 12-5 team. Kimi carried him at 1.2%, and only one running-back number anywhere on the board went higher: GPT's 1.4% on Bijan Robinson. He carries an undisclosed Questionable designation with an August 27 return date.
• Jonathan Taylor, Colts ran for 1,585 yards and 18 touchdowns at 4.9 a carry. The panel's problem is the 8-9 team around him, which is precisely the condition that separates him from Peterson in 2012.
• Myles Garrett, Rams had 23 sacks and 33 tackles for loss in 2025 and changed teams. Claude Opus used him as the proof of concept in reverse: 23 sacks on a 5-12 Cleveland team is the ceiling of a defensive case, and it did not come close.
• Jared Goff, Lions is a longshot by attention rather than by position. He threw for 4,564 yards and 34 touchdowns on a 105.5 rating and trades at two and three cents. The panel has him at 3.4%.

And then there is the contract nobody talks about. Kalshi lists a Tie/Co-Winners market at half a cent. The last time the AP produced co-winners was 2003, the same vote this article opens with. The panel was not asked to price it, because a tie is not mutually exclusive with the individual names.

Where The Panel Changed Its Mind

After round one, every seat was shown the other seven boards and their reasoning, anonymized so no model knew which lab produced what. Revising was optional. Every seat moved by at least half a point on a dozen names or more, and one moved on 25 of them.

The two biggest moves went in opposite directions on the same player, and they are the reason the final number is worth reading.

The position base rate heavily concentrates probability on ascending quarterbacks commanding top-seeded teams, making Drake Maye's 14-3 record, elite metrics, and new weapon the clear standout. — Gemini

Gemini had opened at 20.5% on Maye and cut him to 14.5% after reading the panel, the single largest revision of the round. DeepSeek went the other way, from 12.1% to 17.8%. The board converged on the same man from above and below.

The most interesting reversal was not about Maye at all. GPT opened with Lamar Jackson at 2.8%, near the bottom of the top tier, then more than doubled him to 6.0%.

Baltimore's 8-9 hides +26 differential and his 13-game per-game rates were vintage; two-time winners get re-elected when healthy. — Kimi

GPT accepted that argument, and GLM accepted it too, moving Jackson from 3.5% to 6.4%. Joe Burrow gained the same way on four different boards, for the same reason: the models decided a 6-11 record built on eight games played is a health record and not a talent record.

One seat barely moved at all on the name everyone else was arguing about. DeepSeek opened Matthew Stafford at 6.0% and closed at 6.1%, and its explanation was that nothing in the other seven boards changed the structure of the question.

Matthew Stafford (6.1%) is priced below his 46-TD season: the 7.2% historical repeat rate, age 38, and regression from a career outlier justify the discount. — DeepSeek

What Would Change The Panel's Mind

Four things, all checkable, with the direction each pushes the number.

1. A Maye injury or a slow Patriots September. Named by six of the eight seats as their biggest uncertainty or the single most board-moving development. Two of them put a figure on it: Claude Fable said roughly 10 points would redistribute to Allen, Jackson and Burrow, and Claude Opus said a 2-4 start would free about 12 points to Allen, Jackson and Lawrence.
2. Mahomes starting Week 1 healthy and Kansas City winning early. Named by four seats as the development that would compress the top tier fastest. His ledger return date is August 28 and Week 1 opens September 6, so the first real evidence lands in the opening weekend of the season.
3. A Stafford start that looks like 2025 rather than like 38. The panel's discount is entirely about regression from 46 touchdown passes. Six or seven weeks of the same production and the repeat rate stops being the governing fact.
4. A running back putting up an outlier season on a winning team. The non-quarterback group is priced at 6.0% combined on the strength of a 13-year drought, and the last man to break one was Adrian Peterson in 2012. Claude Opus and Kimi both made the comparison explicit and both rejected it: nobody on this board is shaped like Peterson was in 2012. Jonathan Taylor's team went 8-9; Christian McCaffrey is carrying a designation. One of them getting the team half would reprice the entire bottom of this board.

Settlement Timeline

Date	What happens
August 28, 2026	Ledger return date for Patrick Mahomes (left knee, ACL, surgery)
September 6, 2026	Week 1 of the 2026 regular season opens
Early January 2027	Regular season ends; all MVP-relevant production is final
On or around March 14, 2027	Expected settlement, once the AP announces the winner

This page is re-scored when the story moves, and the whole board is rebuilt rather than patched. Prices and panel numbers on it are as of August 22, 2026.

Pick Any Three Models And The Number Moves

Here is the part a single blended figure hides.

The 13.5% next to Drake Maye is the median of eight independent numbers that run from 12.3% to 17.8%, and their flat average is 14.0%. Average any three of those eight instead, and the answer ranges from 12.6% to 15.6% depending entirely on which three you pick. Weight only the three seats with the best public hit rates, which are Gemini, GPT and Claude Opus, and Maye comes out at 14.2%.

Sam Darnold shows the effect more starkly, because the disagreement is wider relative to his price. The flat eight-model average puts him at 5.8%. The lowest three-seat combination puts him at 4.5%; the highest puts him at 7.2%. Against a 2.2% re-scaled fair value, that is the difference between a contract worth about twice its price and one worth more than three times it. Same eight numbers, same market, materially different answer.

The spread is the actual shape of the information rather than a defect in it, and it is why we publish all eight columns instead of one. A reader who trusts calibration above all should weight toward the seats with the longest graded records. A reader who thinks the sports boards reward conviction should weight toward the seats that commit. Both are defensible, and they do not produce the same board.

Every settled call from every seat is scored in public, which is the only way to tell those two readers apart over time.

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The Bottom Line

The market on this board is not making an obvious mistake. It is pricing a 2026 offseason and a set of reputations that a data card built from the 2025 season cannot see, and its four most expensive names are Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert, two of whom have already won this award.

What the panel adds is the discipline of scoring the field without knowing what anything costs. Do that and one profile separates: a 23-year-old who put up a 113.5 rating for the team with the league's third-best point differential, lost the closest MVP vote in 22 years, and came back with a 1,000-yard receiver he did not have. Eight models with no knowledge of the price and no knowledge of each other's answers all put him first. The market has him tied for fifth.

The fades are quieter but they rhyme. Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson and Dak Prescott are priced on who they are; the panel prices them on what their teams did in 2025, which was 11-6, 6-11, 8-9 and 7-9-1. Two of those records were written by injuries and the models said so. Two of them were not.

Those are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice, and every one of them will be graded in public when the AP announces in March 2027. To be explicit: this is analysis of a CFTC-regulated event-contract market for readers 18 and older, not betting advice and not a recommendation to trade. Availability varies by state and changes over time, so check Kalshi's current rules before doing anything with a number on this page.

Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. Drake Maye photo by Tennessee Titans, licensed CC BY 3.0; photos cropped, toned, and composited.

Prices on this page are Kalshi's book. If you also trade on Polymarket, code OS4 gets new users a $50 trading bonus on a $10 deposit — affiliate link; terms as stated by Polymarket; 18+, availability varies by state.