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SAN FRANCISCO -- The NFL MVP award was handed out at NFL Honors on Thursday night and in one of the closest races in league history, Matthew Stafford edged Drake Maye to take home the award. 

Once the NFL season hit December, the MVP battle was widely viewed as a two-horse race between Stafford and Maye, but they only ended up accounting for 47 of the 50 first-place votes. That means there were three voters that didn't put Maye or Stafford on top of their ballot and those three votes essentially ended up deciding the MVP race. 

How is that possible? Well, let's break down how the vote works. 

The panel that votes on the MVP (and all the other awards) is selected by the Associated Press. There are 50 voters and each of them are asked to rank five players on their ballot. A first-place is worth 10 points, a second-place vote is worth five points, a third-place vote is worth three points, a second-place vote is worth two points and a fifth-place vote is worth one point. 

With that in mind, here's how the vote broke down for the MVP: 

1. Matthew Stafford: 366 points (24 first-place votes)
2. Drake Maye: 361 (23)
3. Josh Allen: 91 (2)
4. Christian McCaffrey: 71 (0)
5. Trevor Lawrence: 49 (0)

Of the three first-place votes that did NOT go to Stafford or Maye, two of them went to Josh Allen. So where did that last vote go? It went to Justin Herbert. Yes, Justin Herbert. The voter who put Herbert at the top of his ballot explained his vote on Thursday night. 

You could certainly make a case for Allen or Herbert to win MVP, but it's hard to justify having them at the top of your ballot. And the crazy part is that our Herbert and Allen voters essentially decided the race. 

The final tally was so close that if any of the Allen or Herbert votes had gone in Maye's favor, then he would have won or at least tied with Stafford. 

Consider these two scenarios: 

  • Scenario 1: If Monson had given his first-place vote to Drake Maye and had Herbert second on his ballot, then the Patriots quarterback would have least tied for MVP. That one simple change would have turned the race upside down. 
  • Scenario 2: If one of the Josh Allen voters had instead put Maye on top of their ballot, then once again, the Patriots QB would have been MVP. Although Monson was more than willing to take the heat for his Herbert ballot, it's still not clear who voted for Allen. The Bills quarterback played in the same division as Maye and couldn't even win it. You could certainly argue that Allen had to carry the offense, but that wasn't even necessarily the case. Allen had James Cook in his backfield and Cook led the NFL in rushing this year. 

In a year where two quarterbacks seemed to be a cut ahead of everyone else, these three voters decided to go another route with their vote and it ended up helping Stafford take home his first career MVP. Of course, we don't know for sure that these three votes cost Maye the MVP. If all three of these voters had Stafford ahead of Maye, then that means Stafford was going to win anyway. 

It's OK to think outside the box, but sometimes, you get so far outside the box that you can't even see the box anymore, and that feels like what happened here. If these three voters had gone with Maye at the top of their ballot, then we would have had a different outcome. Instead, we got the closest MVP race since 2003 when Peyton Manning finished in a tie with Steve McNair. 

It's worth noting that both Maye and Stafford both received at least one third-place vote. The AP released the full ballot of every voter last year, but that hasn't happened yet this year. If it does come out, we'll update things here with a bigger breakdown. 

Losing the MVP might actually end up being a good thing for Maye, because Patriots quarterbacks never seem to win the Super Bowl and MVP in the same year. Tom Brady went to the Super Bowl twice in the same year that he won MVP and went 0-2 in those games (2007, 2017). And since 2000, the NFL MVP is 1-9 in the Super Bowl.