NFL News NFL Honors discussion

Ross12 said:

Ken, the core issue is just that the award has become severely fragmented. What is the "MVP"? It seems to mean many different things to many different people, and also to the voting body.

If you feel the MVP is simply the player who had the "best", most impressive season based on the highest numbers, then yes, Stafford hit the highest bar and his selection makes sense. But if you feel the MVP is the player who had the "best" season based on deeper analytical stats, those favor Drake Maye by a wide margin. And even further still, if you think the "MVP" is quite literally the Most Valuable Player - as in, the player who brought the most single value to their team's ability to succeed - that's probably still Drake, or hell, maybe it's even Trevor Lawrence or Christian McCaffrey. But it's sure as hell not Stafford.

The point is, none of the above are "wrong" but none is the single right answer, and when the voters are using several different definitions then the award becomes very hollow and frustrating. There should be more cohesion and unity among the voters. It feels like there used to be - the winner was unanimous far more often in the past; winning the award by less than 50% of the total votes as Stafford did last night is just absurd.



Not sure I understand what you are trying to say here. If he voted for a player because he is friends with the player then yes, we should be mad because "he's my friend" is not a suitable reason to select someone for a competitive award. You then said it's his job to analyze information and make judgements... which he would have abdicated by choosing someone based on being friends with them.

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Kargetina said:

I'm not going to pretend that Maye losing by a single vote doesn't sting. But whatever the outcome of the vote, it all would have hinged on Sunday, anyway.

If the Pats win, everyone, the fans, Maye, the team, will be ecstatic beyond belief, whether he won the award or not.

If the Pats lose, everyone, the fans, Maye, the team, will be extremely disappointed, whether he won the award or not.

So the sting will only last a couple of days. If we win, it'll be a footnote, if we lose, Maye's MVP would have been a poor consolation.

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sb1 said:

So what's the deal about the Herbert vote? He wasn't a finalist so you can "write in" anyone you want like in an election? Who knew?

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lancerman said:

The issue is that this has been part of the MVP debate for years. The "value" piece has always been subjective. 10-15 years ago it probably would have been worse for Maye because people were far less likely to dive into advanced analytics. Maye being close shows more of an embrace of that.

This year was a close race because frankly, it was a weak MVP year and neither Stafford nor Maye had a season that most non fans of their team will even remember in a couple of seasons.

As far as Orlovsky, well that's what you get when you have humans vote on an award. Stafford was a viable candidate and he was biased towards him. You don't get paid to vote for MVP so you aren't held to some stringent criteria or thought process.

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ViperGTS said:

Breer voted for Maye

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mike_usagisan said:

Really happy for Verbal, McDaniels, and Adam. Not a terrible night. It would have been cool for Maye to win MVP, but I don't think Stafford wasn't worthy. I would have cared more about MVP if we weren't still in the hunt. The main takeaway is that I'm going to be pissed about the Bill Belichick snub for a long time.

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ViperGTS said:

Breer voted for Maye

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ScottishPatriots said:

Breer has to be so glad knowing it came down to 1 vote that he didn't vote for Stafford

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lancerman said:

This. If Maye won and we lose in two days, then we aren't celebrating an MVP all year, we are debating what went wrong in the big game. If we win in two days, then it will be "Stafford won the battle, but Maye won the war".

I was a kid in 2007. I was highly invested in Brady winning his first MVP. I asked some older cousins what they thought about it. They said "I only care about the Super Bowl". Nobody looks at 07 and says "damn how great Brady won the MVP".

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festy1986 said:

That's a wild thing considering he said just last night that Stafford was the best QB this year.

He's saying they're not going to release the ballots this year so forgive me for not believing him.

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lancerman said:

This. If Maye won and we lose in two days, then we aren't celebrating an MVP all year, we are debating what went wrong in the big game. If we win in two days, then it will be "Stafford won the battle, but Maye won the war".

I was a kid in 2007. I was highly invested in Brady winning his first MVP. I asked some older cousins what they thought about it. They said "I only care about the Super Bowl". Nobody looks at 07 and says "damn how great Brady won the MVP".

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TheRainMaker said:

I didn’t care about Brady winning the MVP either because it was a forgone conclusion. That year was personal for the players, coaches and fans and the 16-0 was a big FU to the entire league. That Super Bowl ended up being the biggest nightmare for any Pats fan.

The irony was they lost to Giants the same way they beat the Rams. They became Goliath and lost to the little engine that could. It was a tough reality for fans to face.

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ViperGTS said:

The league was complicit as well in that loss with the ending for sure. It wasn't even one missed called it was about 5 blatant calls that should have ended the play for the Giants.

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