Kenneth Walker’s first season with the Chiefs has already pushed Kansas City’s offense into a different gear, and now the early pace of his production is putting him in a conversation almost no running back gets to enter anymore: NFL MVP.
Kansas City brought Walker in on a three-year free-agent deal, and the move has paid off right away. The Super Bowl 60 MVP, acquired from the Seattle Seahawks, has given the Chiefs a new layer on offense and is tracking toward numbers that would not just top his own career highs, but land among the best single-season runs a back has ever put together.
That’s where the MVP angle starts to get interesting. Quarterbacks have long owned the award, but since the Associated Press began handing it out in 1957, running backs are the only other position group to claim it more than once.
Even so, the modern game has made that path nearly impossible. No running back has won MVP since 2012, and only one has done it in the last 20 years.
Adrian Peterson was the last to pull it off, riding his dominant 2012 season to the league’s top individual honor. Before him, LaDainian Tomlinson and Shaun Alexander went back-to-back in 2006 and 2005, respectively, and both posted monster seasons.
Tomlinson ran for 1,815 yards and 28 touchdowns, while Alexander finished with 1,880 rushing yards and 27 scores. That stretch put them alongside some of the biggest names the position has ever seen.
The full list is a short one. Only 18 running back seasons have resulted in AP MVP honors, with names like Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Walter Payton, Marcus Allen, Terrell Davis, and Marshall Faulk in the mix. Jim Brown stands alone as the only running back to win the award more than once, taking MVP three times over a nine-year span, including the first two of his career.
Through five games, Walker is on pace for 2,261 rushing yards and 2,584 yards from scrimmage, both of which would break the all-time records. If he stays anywhere near that level, the usual quarterback-heavy MVP race may have a hard time ignoring him.
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