The NFL's Broken Award

every single season the NFL reminds us that there is no Sport with more value placed on a group's Collective effort over the skill of one individual player I always believe that football is the ultimate team sport if you didn't have a football team it's the ultimate team sport football is the ultimate team sport for me even when it seems that it's all come down to one player in one moment there were still 59 minutes before that where their teammates could have changed the outcome that has always been the beauty of football okay now that we got that out of the way who want argue about who's most important I got Brock p t fantastic he could honestly of course if Drew bre stuck up the joint for the last five that Tom Brady is the MVP right now today at some point M [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Parson no matter the answer you seek all roads lead us back to the early NFL a Loosely structured pit of death where players jump teams between games either interpretation of that works that is until one man named Joe Carr Rose to power in the 1920s with big ideas on how to strike down rule Breakers and build the NFL into a respectable pro league here he is pictured on the Pro Football Hall of Fame website with um does that oh no that's really on there for his efforts as commissioner Carr would be postumus honored in 1939 with the naming of the Joe F car trophy a symbolic recognition of one man's ability to impose his will on an entire league the most valuable player uh thing is a watch company had already been handing out MVPs the previous two seasons so the NFL said um actually that's ours retroactively renamed the previous year's award and just deleted the first one from record why did they do this I have no idea politics aside the first official MVP was Mel Hine in 1938 a center linebacker hybrid whose defining quality was that he refused to leave the field so so when we debate about what the award has become uh this is what they took from you Don Hudson played receiver and he won back-to-back MVPs in 1941 and 42 all he had to do was invent the position and lap the field before anyone could figure out what was going on the beautiful chaos of the Joe F car trophy didn't even last a full decade before the NFL just gave up on it in 1947 and never handed out an official MVP award again which put the concept in kind of a weird limbo no official recognition just a handful of Publications that picked up the slack and started handing out their own independent Awards of course when we talk about the NFL MVP today we're talking about the one handed out by the Associated Press the official one right well we were lied to the nflpa CBA which is a collection of eight letters doesn't value any Accolade above any other from its listed veteran media sources not even AP a fact that the Twitter account for pro football writers of America is always excited to remind you of so why is Miles Teller in a suit given giving out this one well over time it just settled into this deao role and when the AP signed a deal to be presented at NFL honors beginning back in 2011 that was the end of all debate most debate because of the ap's independent status that means that the history books say goodbye to the Joe F car Trophy and any award before 1957's AP award then called the most outstanding player before it was retroactively considered the very first MVP years later we're doing a lot of retroactive naming and I don't know if I'm comfortable with it but every year we argue to no end about what MVP has devolved into what its deficiencies are why the voters are morons for not being unanimous so who's actually deciding on this thing the ap's voting block today is made up of a rotating list of 50 prominent figures in NFL coverage former Players Sports writers and representatives from all forms of Legacy Media it is kind of weird that the list isn't required to involve a voter from every NFL Market just because there are voters that are expressly from one market if you're going to have every voter focused on National coverage that's cool but if you're going to include even one voter from a specific Market or team then you got to have all 32 for the sake of a level field we'll get back to the modern award later but if there's one thing we know historically about the ap's voters it's that they very much enjoy convention from the beginning the MVP has been an offensive award given to a standout quarterback or less often running back of a playoff team two positions and they're the ones that touch the ball the most this gives the NFL's MVP a unique position in sports awards of being a complete tease that technically any position can win but not really and especially not anymore so the award's nearly s decade Ledger acts as a quick who's who in the history of NFL offense a parade of household names mixed in with the occasional trivia answer and given just how rarely the Associated Press has deviated from their tried andrue formula the rare exceptions end up telling us the most about how willing voters are to stretch their definition Jim Brown's 1957 seven win would be the first and only MVP ever awarded to a rookie and his dominance through the 1960s as a Pure Runner coincided with Johnny Unitus his rise as a pure passer those two combined for six out of the first 10 MVPs the Associated Press ever gave out and since that first decade only four other players have ever won the award three or more times one of United's three MVP wins in 1967 even broke the recognized mold of needing to make the playoffs but in Johnny's defense the 67 Colts had the best record in the NFL at 110 and2 heading into their final game of the season due to newly instituted tiebreakers their first and only loss to the Rams knocked them out of the postseason entirely undefeated to eliminated in four quarters the only other player to be named MVP while missing the Playoffs rushed for a record 2003 yards in 14 games and in OJ Simpson's defense oh wait that's not what the wildest deviations to occur have come when a non-offensive player is named most Valu valuable it hasn't happened in nearly 40 years and I'm going to venture that it never will again but it did happen three times Allan page at defensive tackle first broke through to win MVP in 1971 as an interior wrecking ball for a historically good Vikings defense and Lawrence Taylor would win in 1986 with possibly the greatest season ever for a defensive player let alone a linebacker the fact that only two defensive players have ever won the honor is made even funnier by the fact that a kicker has also won MVP the 1982 NFL season was shortened by player strike to only nine games and Mark Mosley posted a 20 for 21 field goal total during the regular season incredibly impressive for the time but also probably not what anyone would consider the engine of a team with one of the best offensive lines ever and the number one scoring defense also he missed three extra points look I'm all for giving kickers their flowers but given that the Chargers quarterback Dan fouz was on historic Pace I get why there were theories spawned that the aps voters were essentially firing back at the players for striking by naming a kicker their MVP you know who got it right and didn't throw a tantrum pro football writers of America want more MVP controversy driven by labor disputes I do in 1987 the NFL would see its final season to date where a strike interrupted normal play this time there was only one less game played in total but three of them were played by replacement players so the stats of players who didn't cross the picket line were only accumulated over 12 games the winner of the AP MVP award was John Elway and it wasn't as though you can't make an argument for him the contentious bit is that in his 12 games Jerry Rice posted 65 catches for 1,78 yards and 22 receiving touchdowns now conversations about the definition of valuable when it comes to NFL MVP are very interesting and thorough with plenty of variables but as a fan who just wants to see greatness appreciated come on man that was our best shot uh want to guess who did name Jerry Rice MVP in 1987 you're right two MVP awards have been shared 1997's between Brett Favre and Barry Sanders and 2003s between Payton Manning and Steve McNair ties like that make for an interesting historical footnote even if they're a little bulky but we probably won't ever see one happen again 2022 saw the AP change their voting system from one single first place vote to a ranked Choice system that Awards points based on placement in a top five the only possible downside is that this allows a player that didn't receive the most first place votes to win the award we just saw it happen with 2023 is comeback Player of the Year and may God help us if it ever happens with MVP that said though only two winners in MVP history have ever done so unanimously which seems low until you think about how difficult it is to get 50 people to agree on anything Tom Brady in 2007 and Payton Manning in 2004 and 2013 famously eviscerated the concept of Defense but each time had a rogue voter leave them one tally short leanian Tomlinson and Adrien Peterson both put up video game numbers and still needed some extra juice just to barely squeeze into the window for a running back to an MVP as NFL offense has shifted due to rule changes and the scheme Evolutions that followed we reached a point where it seems silly to consider any position other than quarterback could ever be named most valuable again before the 2010s quarterbacks had never won more than 5 years in a row and now they've won all of the past 11 even with absurd broken Seasons like JJ Watt in 2014 failing to generate any real momentum we've seen an increase to the value of what was already the most valuable position in football and the the voters formula has hardened into concrete nine of those last 11 MVPs awarded were the quarterback of the team with the best record in the NFL point blank and it's difficult to see that changing in the years to come given how heavily team success has always weighed in the minds of MVP voters 2023 is MVP race saw this play out to the letter as MVP odds traded hands from one QB with the best record in football to the next to the next and even though it was a down year for Signal callers across the board there was never a feeling the award could go in any other direction ction now I don't want anyone thinking this is some kind of veiled critique of Lamar Jackson winning MVP because I think he was definitely the right choice given the award's current form but if there's one Central problem with today's MVP award it's the fact that because it's open to all positions it makes the award for offensive and defensive player of the year feel like some kind of consolation prize that's why I think we should go full circle remember when I mentioned the first ever AP award was actually called most outstanding player uh why did they change that to fit in with other leagues because MVP sounds cooler than mop that's true that's that's actually pretty compelling but if you remove the valuable qualifier instantly the field opens up to any individual that stands Head and Shoulders above their peers regardless of their position quarterbacks could and would still win a significant amount of awards but during the years where history is made at another position there's no reason those players would need to be gatee kept from the sports highest individual honor if that big of a change is a bridge too far we can all at least agree that the most valuable player in the league is by necessity always always going to be a quarterback so we can stop pretending and just make the award quarterback only in return quarterbacks are disqualified from winning offensive player of the year which I'm already in favor of because it makes my eye twitch whenever MVP and offensive player of the year are given to the same quarterback I get that you can make an argument for why but please stop and while we're at it why did they get rid of the offensive line award haven't we done enough big man arer look I'm far from the first person to suggest these ideas but any change to the MVP award would be significantly less annoying than our current raid where we pretend this is the year a non QB can win it just have it go to one of the two one-seed quarterbacks and remember the AP isn't beholden to the NFL other Publications have made changes at their own discretion and so can they regardless of who's handing out the awards AP pfwa PFF pfchangs all of them just stand to serve as a reminder of a moment in time they're important to players in terms of contract negotiations and Legacies but for fans they're a quick snapshot you can remember an entire season by long after the years before and after have blurred into one one another that's why people care about these things so much you want to see history reflect what you saw out on that field after all a world where no one thought to recognize the indestructible mhine is even darker than the one we live in before we head out of here I want to take a quick second and thank football head coach for helping me make this video happen there are plenty of football games out there but football head coach takes a different approach from most of them and actually focuses on what I think is the most interesting aspect of these games which is building up your team and watching it get better over time it's licensed by the nflp so you're improving your roster with real players and you're able to dive in and customize your team's strategy and formations to your strengths before you let the games play out and see where you got to rethink I got this beautiful shiny JK Dobbins card and now my team doesn't pass we play the game the way our forefathers intended us to play it right now they've rolled out Team of the Year packs which give the opportunity to take the players that performed best this past season and build your roster out around them if any of this sounds like fun or worth checking out for a few minutes click the link in the description or scan the QR code on screen now to download football head coach and start building your own team here is my user id as well if you want to add me on there just know that our locker room is United and our Motors Relentless so one final thank you to football head coach and I will catch you all on the next one thank you I love you take care

Channel: Set the Edge

Views: 86,787

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Id: 8vjirR31-lE

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024