It’s been another year of explosive plays, shattered records, and burgeoning superstars.
What better way to celebrate the 2025 NFL season than with a preview of the upcoming NFL Honors award ceremony?
The event will be hosted on February 5, the Thursday before the Super Bowl, in San Francisco.
Here are our predictions for who’ll be taking home some of the most coveted accolades this league has to offer.
Contents
- 1 NFL Most Valuable Player Prediction: Matthew Stafford
- 2 NFL Coach of the Year Prediction: Mike Vrabel
- 3 NFL Offensive Player of the Year Prediction: Jaxon Smith-Njigba
- 4 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Prediction: Myles Garrett
- 5 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Prediction: Jaxson Dart
- 6 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Prediction: Carson Schwesinger
- 7 NFL Comeback Player of the Year Prediction: Christian McCaffrey
NFL Most Valuable Player Prediction: Matthew Stafford
Despite falling short in the playoffs, the 2025 regular season was a career-defining one for Matthew Stafford.
Through Week 18, Stafford ranked among the top 10 quarterbacks in average yards per completion (7.9) as well as average passer rating (109.2).
He also led the league with 4,707 passing yards and connected on a career-high 46 total touchdown passes (also ranked No. 1).
The next-closest quarterback in both metrics was Jared Goff, who fell 143 yards and 12 touchdowns shy of Stafford’s totals.
Stafford didn’t just outclass his 2025 competition. He also sports better passing stat lines than both of the previous two NFL MVPs.
Lamar Jackson passed for just 3,678 yards and 24 touchdowns through his 2023 MVP campaign, while Josh Allen finished the season with 3,731 yards and 28 touchdowns when he won the award last year.
Stafford’s success this season kept Los Angeles in contention despite a competitive NFC West, and he was able to elevate Davante Adams and Puka Nacua to new heights of their own, as well.
In the aftermath of his 17th season in the NFL, discussions regarding Stafford’s potential retirement are imminent.
Whether he decides to stay on remains to be seen, but this past season would serve as the perfect exclamation point on the end of one of the league’s most storied careers.
NFL Coach of the Year Prediction: Mike Vrabel
2025 produced a host of worthy candidates to take home the Coach of the Year Award.
We saw Liam Coen and Ben Johnson shift the culture in their respective new cities, while Mike Macdonald and Kyle Shanahan kept their winning ways alive in the NFC West.
But there is one success story that rises above the rest.
Mike Vrabel took the reins in New England in January of 2025, after the organization made the decision to move on from Jerod Mayo.
Disagreements with higher-ups in Tennessee ended his last head coaching gig, but Vrabel was able to prove all of his doubters wrong in just one season with the Patriots.
After the team won just four games under Mayo in 2024, Vrabel’s Patriots looked much more akin to the juggernaut of a team that Bill Belichick built his dynasty around.
New England won 14 of their 17 games this season, taking the AFC East by storm and finishing the regular season as the conference’s No. 2 playoff seed.
They’ve since run the table and earned themselves a trip back to the Super Bowl.
In Vrabel’s first season, the Patriots ranked sixth in rushing yards per game (128.9), fourth in passing yards per game (205.5), and second in points per game (28.82) behind only the Los Angeles Rams.
These are massive improvements compared to the 2024 Patriots, who ranked 13th in rush yards per game (115.8), 32nd in passing yards per game (176.2), and 30th in points per game (17.00).
Vrabel’s key to victory has been the prioritization of Drake Maye’s development.
Maye’s ascent to his newfound status as an elite passer has given Vrabel a team to build around, as all of New England’s developing skill position players benefit from a reliable quarterback-coach connection.
The newest of New England’s 16 head coaches fought hard to get to this point, and his efforts have gotten him just steps from the mountaintop.
Vrabel will have a chance to do what most coaches only dream of achieving in their first year with a new team on what’s shaping up to be a fateful first Sunday in February.
NFL Offensive Player of the Year Prediction: Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Although 2025 marked his third season as a starting wideout for the Seahawks, this year could certainly be considered one long coming-out party for Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
DK Metcalf’s sudden departure for Pittsburgh in the offseason raised questions regarding Smith-Njigba’s ability to command this offense without another Pro Bowl-caliber wideout alongside him (especially as it went hand-in-hand with the introduction of a new starting quarterback).
The former Buckeye responded to those concerns by catching 119 of his 163 targets for a league-high 1,793 yards and a career-best 10 touchdowns.
He was also among the top 10 receivers in yards after the catch (528 yards) and second with 79 total 1st downs.
In an offense that was expected to be thin on weapons (featuring an aging Cooper Kupp among a host of unproven youth) throughout 2025, Smith-Njigba became a beacon of hope that the Seahawks have since turned into an unexpected run to the Super Bowl.
There’s still time for Smith-Njigba to run away with two of the NFL’s most coveted trophies this season.
NFL Defensive Player of the Year Prediction: Myles Garrett
Many of the other awards presented during this year’s NFL Honors will feature plenty of drama and speculation as to who the winner will be.
This is not one of those awards.
Even well before he shattered the NFL’s single-season sack record, a record that stood for 24 years after Michael Strahan set it back in 2002, Myles Garrett has been a shoo-in for this year’s Defensive Player of the Year award.
As impressive as his record-breaking 23 sacks were, Garrett’s impact goes much deeper than those handful of plays in which he was able to take down the quarterback.
Garrett also finished the season ranked fourth in the league with 84 pressures and second with 37 quarterback hits.
He also recovered 3 fumbles on the season.
The utter chaos Garrett unleashed as part of this Browns’ front-seven allowed Cleveland to foster a top-three pass defense in the league, holding opponents to an average of just 167.2 yards per game through the air.
Garrett isn’t the only Browns’ player eligible for one of these awards, but he was certainly the team’s, and arguably the league’s, most valuable defensive asset in 2025.
NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Prediction: Jaxson Dart
No other rookie this season was able to alter the landscape of his offense quite like Jaxson Dart did for the New York Giants in 2025.
Despite winning just 4 of his 12 starts, Dart put up the kind of numbers that scream potential.
He ranked second among rookie quarterbacks with 2,272 passing yards (behind only Cam Ward, who played five more games than Dart), and third in average passer rating with 91.7 (behind Tyler Shough and Riley Leonard, who played 3 and 11 fewer games than Dart, respectively).
Dart also finished the season with a top-10 TD:INT ratio, beating out all other rookie passers in that metric.
To the dismay of many fans, the former Ole Miss Rebel also found a niche in the running game.
When Dart was able to stay on the field, he ranked third among all quarterbacks with 487 rushing yards on the season, and he tied Trevor Lawrence with a second-ranked 9 rushing touchdowns on the year.
Dart’s season may not have ended the way anyone in New York hoped, but his rookie year set him up nicely for the future as he waits on his full cast of weapons to return to playing condition.
NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Prediction: Carson Schwesinger
He may be one of just two finalists for this award who were not first-round draft picks, but Carson Schwesinger had the kind of rookie season that makes one wonder how he fell to the second round in the first place.
After closing out his impressive collegiate run as a UCLA Bruin, Schwesinger ranked fifth in the NFL (1st on his team by a large margin) with 156 total tackles.
11 of those came behind the line of scrimmage, ranking him third on the Browns in TFLs behind Myles Garrett and Alex Wright.
Schwesinger also recorded a pair of interceptions (ranked 2nd on the team) as well as 3 batted passes on the year.
In just one season, Schwesinger has managed to make himself a fixture in this tight Browns’ defense, and he’ll likely be an integral part of their continued rebuild in the coming seasons.
NFL Comeback Player of the Year Prediction: Christian McCaffrey
After a season-ending PCL injury halted his 2024 campaign after just four weeks, Christian McCaffrey rallied in 2025 to complete his first full season since 2022.
Injuries have plagued McCaffrey for the entirety of his nine-year career, but he’s proven time and again that he can assert a commanding role in any offense as long as he’s able to stay on the field.
Through his first full season back, McCaffrey made his re-ascension to the top of the NFL’s scrimmage yard charts look like muscle memory.
If he did lose a step after his most recent ailments, it wasn’t noticeable this season.
McCaffrey finished his ninth season in the NFL with 1,202 rushing yards (ranked 8th) and 924 receiving yards (ranked 24th), making him the second-most productive player in the league behind Bijan Robinson.
He and Bijan were the only two players to break 2,000 total scrimmage yards in 2025.
The 49ers were one of the NFL’s most injured teams in 2025.
The list of the fallen includes defensive touchstones like Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, and rookie Mykel Williams.
On offense, the 49ers played without keystones such as George Kittle and even Brock Purdy for parts of the season.
Through all those losses, McCaffrey’s continued perseverance served as a lifeline for San Francisco.
His efforts helped the embattled 49ers secure a 12-5 record, and they were even able to steal a playoff victory in Philadelphia before their Divisional Round defeat.
While it may not be the trophy he was hoping to hoist in the Bay Area this year, a Comeback Player of the Year win for McCaffrey might inspire his teammates to return with that same fire under them in 2026.