1. It’s a travesty that Brees hasn’t won the award. Unfortunately for him the defense has taken him out of the running many years. I was in complete shock in 2009 and realized this award is political when Manning won, not just won, but in a complete landslide over Brees. Manning NEVER had to deal with major injuries besides in 2010 and he struggled to an embarrassing degree. Brees had much less talent in9 and put up a 109.6 rating to Manning’s 99.9. That’s an enormous difference, even though Manning had his (as always) two Hall of Fame receivers. Brees finished 13-2; Manning finished 14-2. Manning had the better defense. The other part of it is “the narrative” which somehow ALWAYS went to Manning, some absurd perception of carrying a terrible team despite that he had a phenomenal supporting cast. Brees took the Saints on his shoulders and should have won the “the narrative” but somehow lost. It’s really incredible the lengths they went to in order to ballwash Manning. And now there is “fatigue” about Brady’s excellence and he idea that “he doesn’t need any more,”but Manning absolutely needed that fifth. Also, Brees was just unfortunate that in 2011 he had a historic season but Rodgers had a more historic season. It’s ironic that Ryan and Newton have MVP awards in that division, while Brees is easily more worthy of having the hardware.
2. Russell Wilson does not deserve to be in the discussion. The Seahawks are always a middle ranked offense and this year is no difference. Wilson put up some historically bad first half numbers; I think he had something like 5-6 games where the offense failed to score a TD before halftime. He has no sense of the pocket and is responsible for many sacks, which don’t count against his stats. But even if he was lights out this season and you don’t agree with the previous points, missing the playoffs is rightfully a non-starter for MVP because he failed to accomplish the minimum goal of regular season success. Another way of thinking about it: if you put any other QB on Seattle this year, they can’t have a worse ultimate result than Wilson, which is failing to qualify for the playoffs. But theoretically, a different quarterback could have made the playoffs. Maybe they would have it maybe they wouldn’t have, but there is virtually no bar that they would need to set higher, since the Seahawks failed in the regular season, and the QB is most correlated player to team success and failure.
