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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Charles Goldman

Chiefs DT Chris Jones manifesting an MVP win in 2023

One of Patrick Mahomes’ teammates is coming for his MVP award.

Kansas City Chiefs DT Chris Jones took to Twitter on Easter Sunday to share some aspirations for the upcoming season. Those aspirations are to win the award that Mahomes won for the second time in 2023.

“I’m going to win MVP,” Jones wrote.

Jones is coming off a season where he matched his career-high in sacks (15.5) and posted the most total tackles of his career (44). In order to get his name in the conversation for the MVP, he’s going to need to exceed his career-high sack total and then some.

Only two defensive players have ever won the AP NFL MVP award. In 1971, Vikings DT Alan Page became the first-ever defensive player to win the award after recording 109 tackles, nine sacks, three fumble recoveries and two safeties. The last defensive player to win the award was Lawrence Taylor, who posted 20.5 sacks in the 1986 NFL season. That shows you what the floor is for a defensive player winning the award, but it has been 36 years since a defensive player won the award. It feels like Jones will have to well exceed that mark to earn this honor.

The last 10 players to win the MVP honors from the Associated Press were all quarterbacks. Jones certainly has an uphill battle to get this task accomplished, but he’s proven to be quite the clairvoyant when it comes to making offseason predictions about the upcoming season.

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