NFL Honors

• 1. Introduction

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  NFL Honors made its debut on the 4th of February 2012, the night before Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, when Aaron Rodgers became the first player to walk away with the Most Valuable Player award. The host was Alec Baldwin, the venue was the Murat Theatre, and the broadcast went out on NBC. What began that night in Indianapolis has grown into one of professional football's most watched annual rituals.

  The event raises questions worth sitting with. Who decides the winners? How has the ceremony changed over its first decade and a half? And what does it tell us about how the NFL wants to present itself to the public? Those answers are scattered across fifteen ceremonies and counting, from Phoenix Symphony Hall to Resorts World Theatre in Las Vegas.

• 2. The Award Landscape

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  The Associated Press drives the most prominent category of NFL Honors awards, selecting winners for seven major honors each year. Those seven are the Most Valuable Player, Offensive Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive Rookie of the Year, Defensive Rookie of the Year, Comeback Player of the Year, and Coach of the Year. A separate Assistant Coach of the Year award also falls under the AP umbrella.

  Beyond the AP categories, the ceremony carries a second tier of honors that reflect the league's broader priorities. The Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award recognizes off-field contributions. The Salute to Service award spotlights military support. The Art Rooney Award and the Deacon Jones Award and the Jim Brown Award all carry the names of figures significant to the sport's history. There is also a Don Shula NFL High School Coach of the Year, which reaches beyond professional football entirely.

  A handful of awards have come and gone. The Madden Most Valuable Protectors award ran from 2011 to 2012. The Greatness on the Road award lasted from 2011 to 2017. The Built Ford Tough Offensive Line of the Year ran from 2016 to 2018 before it was retired. The rotating roster of honors reflects shifting sponsorship relationships and what the league chooses to celebrate in a given era.

• 3. Recurring Winners

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  Aaron Rodgers is the only player to win the MVP award at NFL Honors four times across its first fifteen ceremonies. He took the honor at the 1st ceremony in 2012, then again at the 4th in 2015, the 10th in 2021, and the 11th in 2022. No other player comes close to that tally in the ceremony's history.

  Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson each claimed the MVP award twice in the ceremony's run. Mahomes won at the 8th ceremony in 2019 and again at the 12th in 2023. Jackson won at the 9th in 2020 and the 13th in 2024. Josh Allen took the honor at the 14th ceremony in 2025, held at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans. Matthew Stafford received the award at the 15th ceremony in 2026 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

• 4. Hosts and Venues

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  Alec Baldwin hosted the first three ceremonies, covering the 2012 event in Indianapolis, the 2013 event in New Orleans at the Mahalia Jackson Theater, and the 2014 event in New York City at Radio City Music Hall. That three-year run gave the young ceremony a recognizable face in its earliest seasons.

  Keegan-Michael Key has hosted on three separate occasions, at the 6th ceremony in Houston in 2017, the 11th in Inglewood at the YouTube Theater in 2022, and the 13th in Las Vegas at Resorts World Theatre in 2024. Steve Harvey hosted consecutively at the 8th, 9th, and 10th ceremonies, covering Atlanta in 2019, Miami in 2020, and then the 2021 ceremony which had no listed venue. Other hosts across the run have included Seth Meyers, Conan O'Brien, Rob Riggle, Kelly Clarkson, Snoop Dogg, and Jon Hamm.

  The 16th ceremony, scheduled for the 11th of February 2027 in the Los Angeles area, will be hosted by someone yet to be announced.

• 5. Format and Broadcast Evolution

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  From 2012 through 2020, NFL Honors was pre-recorded and then broadcast the same day it was taped. That changed at some point in the ceremony's history, but the live-versus-recorded distinction shaped the production approach for nearly a decade. The ceremony was also originally scheduled the day before the Super Bowl each year, a slot it held from 2012 to 2021.

  Starting with the 2022 ceremony, the league moved NFL Honors to the Thursday before the Super Bowl, giving it more breathing room in the host city's event calendar. The network carrying the ceremony has rotated across NBC, CBS, Fox, and ABC across its run, with NFL Network airing the ceremony annually from the 11th through the 15th editions.

  Netflix entered the picture with a four-year exclusive broadcast deal covering the 16th through the 19th ceremonies. That arrangement marks a significant shift in where fans will find the show, pulling it off traditional broadcast and cable television for at least four years starting with the 2027 edition in Los Angeles.