Patrick Mahomes is top NFL player in 2018, per FiveThirtyEight

Even the most ardent Patrick Mahomes fan couldn’t have expected this in 2018: 50 touchdown passes and 5,097 yards.

But Mahomes accomplished that as part of an amazing season. It’s why the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight.com ranked the Chiefs quarterback as the second best player in 2018 among everyone from the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.

FiveThirtyEight’s Neil Paine used “all-in-one value metric of choice in each pro sport for which we have Elo ratings and ranking every player relative to other individual seasons since 2000. … “

What are Elo ratings? According to the article, that’s the “Approximate Value for the NFL, wins above replacement for MLB (averaging the versions of WAR found at Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs) and a mix of value over replacement player (VORP), win shares and player efficiency rating for NBA players (with those numbers for current NBA seasons prorated to 82 games).”

Got that? The only other NFL player to make the list: New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who was ranked seventh.

Mahomes finished just behind Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts, who took the top spot after winning the American League MVP award and helping Boston win the World Series.

Paine wrote: “NFL MVP favorite Patrick Mahomes was a very close second behind Betts, having produced one of the top individual skill-position seasons of the millennium while leading the Kansas City Chiefs’ explosive offense. (And he’s still going, of course.)“

After Betts and Mahomes, Angels outfielder Mike Trout was ranked third by FiveThirtyEight, followed by Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom and Lakers star LeBron James.

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