Imagine a world without quarterbacks. Wait. Don't do that. Without quarterbacks, every time a center snapped the ball, it would just roll and roll and roll and everyone on both teams would chase after it and someone would recover it and then the whole thing would start over again. It'd be a huge mess.
So instead, imagine a world in which quarterbacks couldn't win the MVP award. Let's say we decided to take them out of it, gave them their own separate award in addition to the huge salaries and all the endorsement money they make, and left the MVP to the guys doing the dirty work at the other positions.
What would the NFL's MVP race look like at this point, if we did that? Glad you asked.
Let's take a look at five non-quarterback candidates for the 2020 NFL MVP award as we head into Week 10. These aren't the only five, so don't get mad if your favorite player isn't on here. It's just a way of spotlighting some guys who are likely to lose out in the MVP race to Patrick Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers or Russell Wilson or whomever. Some of the work these players are doing is MVP-worthy, even if they probably won't get the award in the end.
Dalvin Cook, RB, Minnesota Vikings
Got to be honest: Cook was the inspiration for this column. At this point, he might be the non-quarterback with the best chance to actually win the award. Entering Thursday night's Colts-Titans game (before Tennessee's Derrick Henry took over the lead), Cook was leading the NFL in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns in spite of the fact that he missed one game because of injury, left another game halfway through because of that injury and the Vikings had already had their bye week. Cook is averaging 123 rushing yards per game and is on pace for 24 rushing touchdowns -- a number only four players have ever exceeded in a single season. The record for rushing touchdowns in a season is 28, by LaDainian Tomlinson in 2006, and there's reason to think Cook can beat it, because the Vikings are running everything through him. He has 34% of his team's scrimmage yards -- the highest such figure of any player in the league -- and over the past two games it's up to 59%.
With the help of crack ESPN researcher Paul Hembekides, I learned this week that the Minnesota offense leads the NFL in yards per play (6.6), and that it's not just Cook running and catching the ball. His just being on the field makes the Vikings' offense run. Quarterback Kirk Cousins has a QBR of 90, a completion percentage of 63.6 and a yards-per-attempt average of 12.8 on play-action passes with Cook as the running back. Running play-action through anyone else, Cousins' QBR is 33.2, his completion percentage is 44 and his yards-per-attempt average is 6.7.
Cook was playing fine to start the season. He had 181 yards on the ground in Week 3 against the Titans and 130 the following week against the Texans. The game in which he got hurt was a one-point loss in Seattle that dropped the Vikings' record to 1-4, and they lost without him the following week to drop to 1-5.
In the two games since he came back, though, Cook has a total of 478 yards from scrimmage and six touchdowns. That's more scrimmage yards over the past two games than the Miami Dolphins have, and the Dolphins have won those games. It's one of the great two-game stretches by a running back in league history. He's only the third player to record more than 225 scrimmage yards and multiple touchdowns over a two-game span. The others were Deuce McAllister in 2003 and Jim Brown in 1963. Jim Brown, you guys.
More importantly, the Vikings won both of those games to improve to 3-5. Their next four games are against Chicago on the road and then home against the Cowboys, Panthers and Jaguars. ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) has them favored in all four of them, so it's not out of the question that they're sitting at 7-5 with four games to go in a season in which at least seven teams from each conference will make the playoffs. If they are, there's a pretty good chance it'll be because Cook kept up his pace.
Stefon Diggs, WR, Buffalo Bills
A wide receiver has never won the award. Frankly, if the Saints' Michael Thomas couldn't win it last season, when he set a single-season record with 149 receptions, it's hard to imagine a wide receiver ever will. But what Diggs has meant to the Bills, who traded a first-round pick to the Vikings to get him in the offseason, deserves attention.
"Diggs has really helped Josh [Allen] a lot," Bills general manager Brandon Beane told me in a recent phone conversation. "What he's done for our offense, it's been everything we could have expected and more."
Diggs didn't love it in Minnesota, and part of that might have been having to share the spotlight and the targets with the Vikings' other star receiver, Adam Thielen. No such issue in Buffalo, where Diggs has been Allen's unequivocal favorite target. Allen has thrown Diggs' way a league-leading 91 times, and Diggs has caught a league-leading 63 passes for a league-leading 813 yards.
Apart from the production, Beane said Diggs' ability to run various routes and operate out of different parts of the formation has helped unlock a lot of things for fellow receivers John Brown, Cole Beasley and Gabriel Davis as well as the offense overall. You trade a first-round pick, you'd better get something valuable back. Diggs has been as valuable to the Bills as just about any new player has been to his team this season.
Alvin Kamara, RB, New Orleans Saints
While Michael Thomas was missing six games for injury and discipline reasons, quarterback Drew Brees was fending off questions about whether his arm was shot, and the Saints' defense was struggling to find its footing, Kamara was just going about his usual business and carrying the team. Like Cook, Kamara got a nice contract extension this offseason. Like Cook, he's helping convince his team it was the right move to pay him.
Entering Thursday night, Kamara led the NFL with 1,036 yards from scrimmage -- five more than Cook and 112 more than Henry, who played in that aforementioned Thursday night game and had 109 total yards. Only Cook, Tyreek Hill and Todd Gurley II have scored more touchdowns than Kamara has. He's 14th in the league with 471 rushing yards, which obviously doesn't knock your socks off, but this will: Kamara has caught 60 passes -- the same number as DeAndre Hopkins and Robby Anderson and more than anyone else but Diggs (63) and Keenan Allen (62). All of those other guys are wide receivers. The only player other than Kamara who's in the top 25 in catches and isn't a receiver or a tight end is Carolina running back Mike Davis, who has 43. He's 20th in the league in receiving yards.
Having 60 catches with half a season to go means Kamara's bizarre streak of catching exactly 81 passes in each of his first three seasons is likely to end, which is a shame for those of us who like nerdy statistical quirks. But for the Saints, it's a godsend. Considering everything that hasn't been working for New Orleans in the first half of the season, the Saints are 6-2 and have beaten closest challenger Tampa Bay twice. The constant, reliable offensive force through it all has been Kamara.
T.J. Watt, OLB, Pittsburgh Steelers
We have to have a Steeler on here. They are the only undefeated team in the league. And as much fun as their mix-and-matchable wide receivers have been, the MVP candidates in Pittsburgh are on the defensive side of the ball. Watt leads all edge defenders in pass rush win rate -- an ESPN metric powered by NFL Next Gen Stats -- of 31.3%. His 22.2% win rate against double-teams ranks third in the league. Our numbers credit him with a league-leading 20 incompletions and three interceptions "created" via pass rush.
Watt has seven sacks of his own, trailing only Cleveland's Myles Garrett, the Rams' Aaron Donald and New Orleans' Trey Hendrickson, all of whom are candidates for this list in their own right. But the havoc Watt wreaks even when he doesn't get a sack elevates him above even the other outstanding front-seven defenders on the Steelers' defense.
Aaron Donald, DT, Los Angeles Rams
It bears repeating, basically every year, that Donald might very well be the best player in the entire NFL regardless of position. As in, yes, even if you include the quarterbacks. Of course, we aren't including the quarterbacks on this list. Donald is a must -- making our list by a nose ahead of Garrett and his nine sacks.
Donald has nine sacks too, after all, and he gets them from an interior defensive line position, which makes him even more spectacular. His pass rush win rate of 21.4% ranks second among interior defenders, behind only Atlanta's Grady Jarrett, whose number is a pretty stunning 26% and might make him a candidate for this list if the Falcons had a better record.
What makes Donald special is that he does all of this against pretty constant double-teams. Donald sees a double-team on a league-high 70.5% of his pass-rush snaps. Only Jarrett and Chicago's Akiem Hicks have seen more double-teams on their pass-rush attempts, and each of them has played one more game than Donald. The Rams have slumped a bit lately on offense, but the defense is having a resurgent year. Donald, as always, is right in the middle of it.