Why was Josh Allen awarded $1,500,000 after NFL Honors?

The NFL Honors took place on Thursday night and we learned which players took home the regular season awards, including Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen winning his first NFL MVP Award.

This came as a bit of a surprise to many people as the voters for the NFL MVP are the same that voted for the All-Pro teams and Lamar Jackson was voted as first-team All-Pro while Josh Allen was a member of the second-team All-Pro.

By winning the NFL MVP Award, the seventh pick in the 2018 NFL Draft finally won some hardware for his efforts to lead the Buffalo Bills to their fifth consecutive AFC East Championship before losing in the AFC Championship Game. ESPN's Adam Schefter posted how Josh Allen had a $1.5 million bonus in his contract for winning the NFL MVP Award last night.

Allen had an incredible season as he led the NFL with a 77.3 QBR while completing 307-of-483 (63.6%) of his passes for 3,731 yards with 28 passing touchdowns to six interceptions.

To add to that, he ran the football like a power running back adding 102 rushing attempts for 531 yards (5.2 yards per catch) with 12 rushing touchdowns including a receiving touchdown on a statistical anomaly.

How did the voting for Josh Allen as NFL MVP wind up?

To understand how the NFL MVP voting happens, a committee of 50 people votes for the award and they are publicly made available. Each member gets to vote for five players with a first through fifth-place vote. Every vote is weighted differently as a first-place vote is worth five points while a fifth-place vote is worth one point.

When all 50 votes are counted, the player with the highest number of points from their votes is the winner of the NFL MVP Award. For this year, Allen received 27 of the 50 first-place votes while Lamar Jackson had 23 first-place votes. Below are the NFL MVP finalists and how many points they received.

1. Josh Allen: 383 Points
2. Lamar Jackson: 362 Points
3. Saquon Barkley: 120 Points
4. Joe Burrow: 82 Points
5. Jared Goff: 47 Points