PICKS FOR MVP,
BEST PLAYS, ROOKIES
We've reached the halfway point of the NFL campaign, which
means its midseason awards time. I handed out quarter-season awards after Week 4, and just like last time,
I'm trying to use my best judgment on who should win the award based on the
criteria typically set by the voters. I'll mention those quirks as we get
involved, but in some cases, I'll have to break from tradition if I feel like
there's a player deserving of further attention.
Like last time, I'll be listing my top three candidates for
the league's major awards, which are officially handed out by the Associated
Press. I'll also be giving nods for several awards I'm making up, many of which
owe a research debt to the NFL's Next Gen Stats and player-tracking data. Let's
begin, though, by running through the options for Coach of the Year:
My quarter-season winner for this award was Mike Vrabel, and
things haven't exactly gone well for the Titans since then. They started 3-1
and subsequently went 0-3, losing to the Bills, Ravens and Chargers before
hitting a post-London bye. A team that kept finding ways to win games lost one
game on a last-second field goal and another on a failed two-point conversion.
Vrabel isn't a Coach of the Year candidate until the Titans right the ship.
There's a whole other tier of teams whose coaches are
consistently great but never get much appreciation for this award. Bill
Belichick might deserve to win this award every year. Sean Payton's Saints are
7-1.
THIRD: SEAN
MCVAY, LOS ANGELES
RAMS
McVay won Coach of the Year last season and is doing every
bit as good of a job in 2018, but nobody has won this award in consecutive seasons
since Joe Gibbs in 1982 and 1983. The Rams might have needed to go 16-0 for
McVay to win for the second time in two seasons. I think he could win it at
15-1, too, but Sunday's loss to the Saints takes McVay down a peg for
the short term.
SECOND: ANDY
REID, KANSAS CITY
CHIEFS
The one veteran candidate who might be ahead in the running
is Reid, given that the Chiefs are 8-1 after replacing Alex Smith with Patrick
Mahomes. The longtime Eagles and Chiefs coach is rightly getting
credit for bringing Mahomes along and building a devastating scheme around the
strengths of both his quarterback and the Chiefs' many weapons. He hasn't won
this award since 2002, when Reid took a 12-4 Eagles team to the postseason,
although that was an atypical choice given that the Eagles were coming off of
consecutive 11-5 campaigns. Reid was my pick for the award after four weeks last season, but the
Chiefs suffered through a 1-6 stretch in midseason before figuring things out.
Reid can't do that again and compete for this award in 2018.
FIRST: MATT
NAGY, CHICAGO BEARS
Instead, I think the favorite is likely the guy to whom Reid
handed over play calling duties during that ugly November run a year ago. Nagy
might need to share this award with defensive coordinator Vic Fangio given that
the Bears are relying so heavily upon their D, but the first-year coach has
done a great job of working with an extremely inexperienced quarterback
in Mitchell
Trubisky to create an offense that seems to perpetually
generate safe completions with big-play possibilities after the catch. The most
likely candidate to win this award is always a first-year coach who leads a
team from the bottom of a division to the playoffs, and Nagy is the only
candidate who fits that description.
Will Nagy's Bears undergo a fall similar to Vrabel's Titans?
If they do, it won't be for the same reasons. The Titans' three wins came by a
combined nine points, and each required Tennessee to take the lead in the
fourth quarter. We can't say the same thing about the Bears, who led entering
the fourth quarter in four of their five victories. After modest victories over
the Seahawks and Cardinals, the Bears have thumped the Bucs, Jets and Bills by
a combined 84 points. Big wins over bad teams might not seem impressive, but
they're historically a better predictor of future success than narrow wins,
even against better competition.
You might argue that the Bears haven't played a tough slate,
but it isn't about to get difficult. The Bears had the league's second-easiest
remaining schedule by DVOA heading into Week 9, and while the
last-placed Bills were a huge part of that equation, the only dominant team
left on Chicago's schedule is the Rams in Week 14. They have home-and-homes
left with the inconsistent Vikings and the even more inconsistent Lions, plus a
home game against the Packers, and road trips to play the lowly Giants and
49ers. If the Bears can go 5-3 against that schedule, they'll make the
postseason and Nagy should win this award.
PLAY OF THE YEAR
If we're looking for the most important play of 2018 so far,
the best place to go is ESPN's win expectancy model. The play that produced the
biggest swing in win expectancy is the most meaningful one of the first half.
When you look at the numbers, it isn't even really a contest.
Not every game-breaking touchdown is a game winner, sadly.
The third-place play of the year just came Sunday afternoon, when McManus
missed a would-be 51-yard field goal to win the game against the
Texans. Case Keenum had
converted a pair of fourth downs in driving the Broncos to the 37-yard line
with 43 seconds left, but after using its second timeout, Denver decided to
throw a 5-yard pass to Jeff Heuerman before
basically sitting on its lead and settling for a long field goal.
Vance Joseph was punished for attempting to ice Texans
kicker Ka'imi Fairbairn at the end of the first half, which
turned a missed field goal into a make. Research suggests icing the
kicker doesn't have any effect, although Joseph probably remembers
when he successfully iced Younghoe Koo in his first start against the Chargers in
2017. (The universe ices Chargers kickers.) In a situation in which he could
play a much more meaningful role, Joseph had his offense sit on the football
and settle for a 51-yard field goal, which isn't close to a sure thing, even in
the thin air of Denver. The Broncos had a 66.9 percent chance of winning before
the kick, but their win expectancy evaporated entirely with the miss.
The non-special teams Play of the Year belongs to the
Bengals. Andy Dalton's
13-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Green against the Falcons
in Week 4capped a 16-play, 75-yard drive by scoring a touchdown with
seven seconds left, giving the Bengals a 37-36 lead. The game wasn't over --
the Bengals failed on their two-point try and had to keep Atlanta from scoring
-- but Cincinnati's win expectancy jumped by 72.2 percent after the touchdown
pass.
Through nine weeks, though, the Play of the
Year is Graham Gano's
63-yard field goal against the
Giants, which turned a 31-30 deficit into a 33-31 victory for
the Panthers with one second left. Carolina's chances of winning rose by a
whopping 80.7 percent on the play, as the Panthers suddenly became prohibitive
favorites on one of the longest field goals in NFL history. The Panthers only
needed to stop the Giants on the subsequent kickoff to ensure a victory, which
took them to 3-1 in the NFC.
COMEBACK PLAYER OF
THE YEAR
Honorable mention for this award goes to Andre Hal,
who was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in June and has somehow
already made it back onto the field for the first-place Texans. Hal is out with
a shoulder injury and hasn't played enough to compete for this nod, but if we
were measuring what a player has overcome to play football, Hal would be in
first place by a considerable margin.
The only player to drop out of the top three after Week 4
is John Brown,
and that is because the Ravens haven't been able to consistently feature him.
Brown had seven catches on seven targets for 134 yards against the Saints, but
otherwise, he has racked up a total of just 129 yards over Baltimore's four
other games during that time frame. Brown would be the Ravens receiver most
likely to benefit from a quarterback change during the bye, given that Joe Flacco's
55.0 passer rating on deep passes this season ranks 33rd out of 34 qualifying
signal-callers.
Peterson's tenure in Arizona last season ended after a neck
injury, but the 33-year-old's presence on this list stems from the fact that he
was on the street as late as Aug. 20 and was only signed because Derrius Guice went
down with a torn ACL. Peterson racked up only 33 yards from scrimmage and
Washington lost two linemen to serious injuries on Sunday,
but the future Hall of Famer has exceeded everyone's expectations. The former
Vikings star has 604 rushing yards and four scores through nine games. Peterson
has run for first downs on only 19.6 percent of his carries, which cuts through
some of the shine given that he ranks 12th among the 20 backs with 100 carries
or more, but he has still been a productive back for a team that looked like it
was going to have to beg for a useful back behind Alex Smith.
As his offensive line has improved, Luck has begun to grow
comfortable under center. The Colts were on bye this week, but from Weeks 5-8,
Luck took just one sack on 160 dropbacks. That's unheard of for a player who
appeared to be a magnet for pass-rushers as recently as 2016. Opponents were
getting pressure on only 23.1 percent of their dropbacks over that time frame,
which was the seventh-lowest mark in the league.
Predictably, Luck has responded with excellent play. He's
averaging a modest 6.8 yards per attempt, but he has thrown 14 touchdown passes
against five picks, completed more than 64 percent of his passes, and posted a
Total QBR of 76.6, which is sixth best in the NFL over that span. Not bad when
you consider that he was without T.Y. Hilton for
two of those games and Ryan Grant for
the other two.
Even if the player who seemed to defy the physics of the
interior and time-warp his way through the line of scrimmage isn't quite back,
the version of Watt we're seeing in 2018 is still a top-five pass-rusher. He
has to rely a little more on that ceaseless motor, and Watt sees fewer
double-teams thanks to the presence of Jadeveon
Clowney, but the future Hall of Famer is an easy All-Pro pick with
nine sacks, 16 quarterback knockdowns and four forced fumbles in nine games.
MISS OF THE YEAR
In a year in which quarterbacks are producing record numbers
across the board and coaches like McVay and Reid seem capable of scheming open
receivers on just about every single snap, there's one element you simply can't
escape: You've got to finish the play. With help from NFL's Next Gen Stats, we
can actually quantify each pass's chance of being completed. The end result
isn't perfect, but it's the best insight we've had so far into each and every
pass's chance of success.
For this category, I'm limiting myself to throws traveling
16 or more yards downfield, which is the NFL's definition of a deep pass. The
"winner" here is a Jared Goff pass
to Cooper Kupp in
the Rams' season-opening win over the Raiders. As you can see from
the animation below, Kupp looks like he's running a shallow cross before
turning up field on his wheel route. Goff anticipates Kupp coming open and
makes his throw, but even with an 85.6 percent chance of completing this pass,
the throw is behind the receiver and falls incomplete.
There's another way to define this, and it
also includes Goff. The league's Next Gen Stats also measure the distance
between a receiver and any opposing defenders when a pass is thrown or lands,
to provide a strong estimate of how much separation a receiver has. The most
open receiver on an incompletion, by far, came on a Goff pass to Robert Woods against
the Cardinals in Week 2. The Cardinals blew an assignment and left Woods an
almost comically easy path to the end zone with 17.2 yards of separation,
nearly five more yards of space than any other receiver has had on an
incompletion this year. Whether it was Woods hesitating briefly before
continuing his fade or Goff simply missing the throw is hard to tell, but the
Rams missed what should have been one of the easiest touchdowns of the season:
Of course, the Rams won both those games comfortably, and
Goff is still having a great season. It's also terrifying that the Rams could
be among the best offenses in football and still leave meat on the bone.
DEFENSIVE ROOKIE
OF THE YEAR
This is a four-player race, which obviously makes it
difficult to sum up in three spots. I honestly think you could leave off any
one of these players and make a case for the other three. As tough as it was
given that his team led the league in pass defense DVOA heading into the game,
I'm putting Denzel Ward fourth.
He has taken on a lot of responsibility in covering No. 1 wideouts, but even
before Sunday, when Ward left with a hip injury, the Browns were 24th in DVOA
against No. 1 wideouts while allowing them 87.7 yards per game,
which ranked 28th in the NFL.
After a slow start, Chubb came a fire in October. The fourth
overall pick racked up 5.5 sacks in five October games and has eight so far
this season, which is tied for sixth in the league. Chubb has done that on only
11 knockdowns, which is a tough pace to keep up given that edge rushers will
typically turn around 45 percent of their knockdowns into sacks. His
considerable growth during the season suggests that Chubb could continue to
improve as the season goes along, though. I haven't seen consistent play from
Chubb as an edge-setter or when the Broncos have pushed him out into coverage,
but Denver drafted Chubb to take down the quarterback. He's doing that at a
Rookie of the Year-level rate.
Rookie safeties don't often do what James is doing. Usually,
even talented first-rounders who go on to lengthy careers struggle as rookies
or narrowly keep their head above water. James can do everything from fill-in
run support to stand up in coverage against anybody the Chargers face on a
weekly basis, and defensive coordinator Gus Bradley asks him to do a little bit
of everything from snap to snap and series to series. He seems to make himself
conspicuous doing one thing or another each week; on Sunday, it was racking up
11 tackles against the Seahawks in a game marred only by an
unnecessary-roughness call on the rookie safety. He still leads all defensive
backs with 3.5 sacks, which has come in handy as the Chargers have missed Joey Bosa.
Leonard missed Indianapolis' game against the Patriots, and
New England promptly took advantage by throwing for a combined 152 yards and a
touchdown to Rob
Gronkowski and James White.
He missed one running play against the Bills and Buffalo turned it into a
30-yard gain. The Colts aren't a great defense, but how many of their starters
can you even name without hoping that Robert Mathis is still in the fold? Leonard
has been an immediate difference-maker for a team desperate to find them.
The South Carolina State product continues
to fill up the scoresheet, as even after missing a game, he has racked up a
league-high 88 tackles to go along with four sacks, three forced fumbles and
two pass breakups. To put that tackle number in context, Leonard has been in on
the tackle on 19.7 percent of his snaps this season. Rams linebacker Cory Littleton,
who is playing behind arguably the scariest interior defensive line in
football, is the only guy with 400 snaps or more within 3.5 percentage of
points of Leonard. I don't think Leonard will win, if only because he's playing
for a team nobody is really paying attention to and won't rack up a huge sack
total, but the second-round pick has been a huge find for Frank Reich and Chris
Ballard in Indy.
OFFENSIVE ROOKIE
OF THE YEAR
Somewhat surprisingly, none of the five quarterbacks taken
in the first round even merit serious consideration for one of these three
spots. The five passers -- Josh Allen, Sam Darnold, Lamar Jackson, Baker
Mayfield and Josh Rosen --
have combined to complete just 56.5 percent of their passes while tossing more
interceptions (32) than touchdown (29). Their cumulative passer rating is 72.1
and their Total QBR, buoyed by rushing, is up at 36.3. Jackson doesn't qualify,
but the other four rookies stand as four of the five worst quarterbacks in the
league by QBR so far this season in a group along with Eli Manning.
Johnson didn't offer much on Sunday against a
stout Vikings run defense, but as the Lions distribute extra touches
after trading away Golden Tate,
Johnson should be one of the first people in line for more runs. The
second-round pick has been a devastating home-run hitter for Detroit, racking
up five runs of 20 yards or more on just 89 carries. The added receiving
utility has been a bonus. Johnson never topped 24 catches or 194 receiving
yards at Auburn, but he already has generated 24 catches for 165 yards in eight
games with the Lions. As long as he doesn't manage to offend Matt Patricia with
his posture, the 43rd overall pick should see his role continue to grow during
the second half.
The touchdown rate from Weeks 2-4 was never going to be
sustainable, although Ridley did get back on the board for the first time since
September with a 40-yard catch in traffic and score during Sunday's
comfortable win over Washington. The former Alabama star caught six
passes for 71 yards, his second-highest yardage total of the season, and Ridley
has caught an even 75 percent of his targets despite averaging nearly 11.2 air
yards per attempt. The presence of Julio Jones is
a blessing and a curse for his Rookie of the Year chances; Jones keeps the
double-teams away from Ridley and opens him up for red-zone opportunities, but
with Julio averaging more than 11 targets per game, Ridley might not get the
target share to compete.
Barkley's numbers are inflated, and he should still win
Rookie of the Year. Just 21.6 percent of his carries have turned into first
downs, which is just below the running back average of 21.8 percent. Barkley
has 152 yards from scrimmage in garbage time, when the Giants start drives with
no more than a 1 percent chance of winning the game. The only players with more
are Chris Ivory (155)
and Odell Beckham
Jr... (165).
And yet, you've seen him play and know what I'm talking
about. Barkley has six touches for 30 yards or more when nobody else has more
than four. He has 348 more yards from scrimmage than any other rookie and is on
pace for 2,032 yards from scrimmage, which only Eric Dickerson and Edgerrin
James pulled off as rookies. The Giants haven't done many creative things with
Barkley, as he has caught just four passes which traveled longer than six yards
in the air. He is the "Get Out of Jail Free" card for an offense that
is tethered to the ground by a horrific offensive line and a quarterback who is
crumbling into dust.
PASS OF THE YEAR
Just as we used completion probability to figure out the
Miss of the Year, we can also use the same stat to figure out which successful
pass actually overcame the longest odds to fall into a receiver's hands. Again,
I'm going to limit myself to passes traveling 16 yards in the air or more. It's
always nice when the numbers match up with the tape and something that seemed
almost impossible on film is backed up by player tracking data too.
Even better, this pass actually played a huge role in a game
too. Not winning, in this case, but tying one. When Kirk Cousins found Adam Thielen for
a 22-yard touchdown against the
Packers in Week 2, it brought the Vikings within two points of
the Packers with 36 seconds to go after trailing 20-7 at the start of the
fourth quarter. Stefon Diggs tied
the score with the subsequent two-point conversion, and after the two teams
combined to miss three makeable field goals over the ensuing 15-plus minutes of
football, the game ended in a 29-29 tie. Watch the animation and you'll see
just how tight of a window Cousins has for this football:
NFL Next Gen Stats estimates that Cousins has just a 12.4
percent chance of completing this one. It's an inch-perfect throw on a
post/wheel concept against man coverage with two deep safeties. Thielen isn't
remotely open when the ball is released -- he's level with cornerback Jaire
Alexander (23) at the 15-yard line -- but Cousins leads Thielen
to the absolute exact spot on the field where he can catch the pass before
being hit by safety Kentrell
Brice (29). When you consider that was Cousins' second
regular-season game with Thielen, the touch and familiarity it took to make
this pass is absolutely unreal. What a throw.
RUN OF THE YEAR
I'm going to use a combination of the Next Gen Stats and the
tape to award this one. It's tempting to award this one to Kareem Hunt's 22-yard touchdown in Week 8, where he broke two tackles,
hurdled a third, and then dragged a fourth Broncos defender to the end zone for
a score on fourth-and-1, but that came when the Chiefs were running a power
shovel read concept and threw Hunt a shovel pass. Technically, it's a pass.
Sorry, Kareem.
Instead, my Run of the Year is the longest run of the season
where a running back went untouched. Those sort of runs can be more about the
offensive line than the back, but Isaiah
Crowell's 77-yard touchdown against the
Broncos in Week 5 is a good balance of both:
The line does a great job of creating an
edge for Crowell, with tight end Chris Herndon (89)
sealing Bradley Chubb at
the point of attack. The only Jets blocker who doesn't do his job is Robby
Anderson, who overruns Chris Harris
Jr. No worry. Crowell stretches the play outside Harris, jukes
both Bradley Roby
and Darian
Stewart into the turf, and outruns the defense to the
house. Terrelle
Pryor throws in a disrespectful stiff-arm of Adam Jones at
the end of the play. The Broncos aren't exactly a tough team to run on this
season, but the Jets could use some good news on offense after Sam Darnold threw
four interceptions on Sunday.
DEFENSIVE PLAYER
OF THE YEAR
History tells us that barring a transcendent season from a
player in the secondary or at middle linebacker; this award goes to a
pass-rusher. With all due respect to guys like D.J.
Swearinger, Stephon
Gilmore and Tre'Davious White, nobody in the secondary has stood out quite
enough to earn a third-placed nod.
My pick here after four weeks was Khalil Mack,
but he falls off the list after an injury-hit October. Mack suffered an ankle
injury during the Bears' Week 6 overtime loss to the Dolphins and hasn't been
the same since. He didn't record a sack or a quarterback knockdown in either of
the losses to the Dolphins or Patriots, and the Bears have wisely sat him out
against the inferior Jets and Bills. We all know what a healthy Mack can do, so
he can still get back into the running, but an anonymous month certainly hurts
his chances dramatically.
Garrett was quietly an impact player on a middling defense
last season, though he missed a chunk of the season with injuries. This year,
Garrett is quietly an All-Pro candidate on the league's best pass defense by
DVOA, but they'll likely fall off that mantel after running into
the Chiefs on Sunday. No matter. Garrett has been excellent, with
nine sacks, 18 knockdowns and three forced fumbles. He has beaten Alejandro
Villanueva for a sack in each of Cleveland's games against the
Steelers, and while his other sacks have been against the less notable of the
linemen world, Garrett's motor shines through on tape. Even if you think he's
blocked, Garrett seems to run his way into second-chance sacks every week. He
and Larry
Ogunjobi are the best building blocks left from the Sashi Brown
reign in Cleveland.
After 3.5 sacks and four knockdowns on Sunday during
Minnesota's twice-annual "What did Matthew
Stafford do to the people of Minneapolis?" festival,
Hunter now leads the NFL with 11.5 sacks, spotting the 24-year-old a 1.5-sack
lead on the competition. And while you could maybe make the case that Hunter
benefited from playing alongside Everson
Griffen before this season, Griffen missed five games before
returning against the Saints in Week 8.
Hunter's performance might not be sustainable -- those 11.5
sacks have come on just 15 knockdowns, which would usually generate something
closer to seven sacks -- but he's a legitimate superstar playing for a defense
with three high-profile games against the Bears, Packers and Seahawks after its
bye. Hunter also gets the Lions again in Week 16 in what could be a showcase
game for the LSU product.
Donald didn't have a sack against the devastatingly quick
release of Drew Brees
on Sunday, so the reigning Defensive Player of the Year had to
settle for four knockdowns, a tackle for loss in which he might have made Alvin Kamarareconsider
football, a pass deflection and a fumble recovery to hand the Rams a short
field. After a slow start to the year, Donald has 10 sacks and 20 knockdowns in
his past six games. Hunter has the better sack total, but Donald is such a
force of nature on each and every snap he plays in a way that nobody else in
football can match right now. If the numbers are close, I lean toward the Rams
star.
LONGEST TOUCHDOWN
OF THE YEAR
An NFL touchdown can only officially go a maximum of 109
yards, given that a player can take the ball in the back of his own end zone
and run it all the way past the other team's goal line for a score. Kick
returner/goal-line back Cordarrelle
Patterson did this for the Vikings back in 2013.
To get more specific, we can use the Next
Gen Stats to see which player actually traveled the furthest en route to a
touchdown this season. On Sunday, we saw an example of just how much work it
can take to score when Panthers wideout Curtis Samuel took
a 33-yard reverse to the house. The longest touchdown of the year, though,
unsurprisingly belongs to a Chiefs player. The surprise might be that it came
while Patrick
Mahomes was on the sideline: It was Tyreek Hill's 91-yard punt
return for a touchdown against the
Chargers in Week 1, where Hill ran a total of 140.9 yards and
got up to 21.8 mph in the process. "Tyreek Hill is fast" isn't
exactly news, but in a league in which players have their pre-draft 40-yard
dash time quoted as gospel a decade into their careers, putting some fresh
numbers on Hill's speed isn't a bad thing.
OFFENSIVE PLAYER
OF THE YEAR
I'm going to treat that as the award for non-quarterbacks,
since there have been years (including 2017) in which the voting has gone in
that direction in awarding the best skill-position weapon the trophy. I'm
willing to consider a universe in which a running back or receiver is eligible
to win MVP, but the season we're seeing from James Conner might
be a useful reminder of how even the great backs can be replaced.
I don't think anybody would argue that Le'Veon Bell isn't a better back than Conner, but with a
great offensive infrastructure and a healthy half-season, Conner has racked up
1,085 yards from scrimmage and 10 touchdowns on 189 touches through eight
games, numbers that compare favorably to what Bell (979 yards from scrimmage
and five scores on 229 touches) produced over the first eight games of last
season. In every one of the league's offenses in which a team has a great
quarterback and a dominant running back, I think the team would suffer more if
it lost its signal-caller than if it lost its ball carrier. Until that changes,
I can't give any of them an MVP nod.
Do you care about the touchdown total? Jones finally did
make it into the end zone for the first time this season, taking a screen to
the house for a 35-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter to seal a win against
Washington. It was a fitting cap to yet another 100-yard day for
Jones, who has run off four such games in five contests. He's the rare wideout
who is so productive that fantasy owners can't even realistically be upset that
he hasn't been scoring touchdowns.
We know touchdown rates for wideouts are generally dictated
by volume and target location as opposed to innate skill, and if you've seen
Julio play, you know skill isn't a problem. More importantly, though, we know
that Jones is drawing attention away from other receivers and creating
opportunities for the Falcons in the red zone. After their prime-time
opening-night debacle in the red zone against the Eagles in Week 1, the Falcons
have averaged 6.2 points per red zone trip, the best mark in football. They've
done that without Devonta
Freeman and are down both of their Week 1 starters at guard.
Jones is the sun in that offense.
With even a middling touchdown rate, Jones would be a viable
top choice here. He's averaging 116.6 receiving yards per game and attracting
targets on 32.3 percent of his routes, both of which are tops among wideouts.
Jones is also averaging nearly 14 air yards per target, which is crazy for his
usage rate. The only WR1s topping that are Mike Evans and Tyreek Hill,
who aren't the same sort of intermediate weapon Jones has been for years. If
you can't get past the touchdowns, you're missing greatness.
Thielen's streak of games with 100 yards and a touchdown
came to an end on Sunday, as he racked up just 22 yards and a score on seven
targets during the win over the
Lions. The most underpaid veteran in the league will have to settle
for entering his bye week with the league lead in receptions (78), receiving
yards (947), and first downs (51). It seems like there's going to come a point
in which Thielen retreats to earth and is suddenly a mortal wideout again, but
over the second half of 2017, Thielen racked up 43 catches for 649 yards and
three scores, which isn't exactly anything of which to be ashamed.
I think you'll see a slight decline in Thielen's numbers, if
only by virtue of volume. Dalvin Cook's
return to health and a likely run of victories against an easier schedule in December
should push Minnesota toward a heavier dose of its running game, which would
come at the expense of its pass-catching corps. Even then, though, Thielen is
going to be a very viable OPOY candidate.
In a way, I couldn't put backs like Kareem Hunt or Alvin Kamara on
this list because Gurley has blown them away with production. Even after his
quietest game of the season during Sunday's loss
to the Saints, Gurley has 1,230 yards from scrimmage, 145 yards more
than the second-placed Conner. Barkley is the only other back to top 1,000
yards. Gurley has 16 touchdowns, which is three ahead of Hunt at 13. He has 31
more carries than any other back, of course, but the former first-round pick is
averaging 4.8 yards per carry and producing first downs on 26.9 percent of his
runs. Kamara is the only back with 100 carries or more who tops him there, and
Kamara has done it over 111 carries to Gurley's 182. Backs with this sort of
volume and efficiency just don't exist anymore.
What would it take for Gurley to win MVP? He had a better
shot last season, when the young breakout candidates tore their ACLs and the
award fell almost by default to Tom Brady,
who is at a natural disadvantage as a former two-time winner. Brady played
great and deserved the trophy, but his efficiency numbers were no different
from 2015, when he didn't come close to winning, and they were actually down
from 2016, when Brady was suspended for four games to start the year.
Gurley has 868 rushing yards and 362
receiving yards to go with 16 touchdowns in nine games, leaving him on pace for
1,543 rushing yards, 644 receiving yards, and 28 touchdowns. That would be one
hell of a résumé, but the Rams might sit Gurley if they have nothing to play for in December.
Voters haven't really been interested in total yards from scrimmage in years
past, but if Gurley can make it to 2,500 and 30 touchdowns, those round numbers
might be enough.
MOST VALUABLE
PLAYER
We're left with the quarterbacks. Two passers are pretty
obviously shoo-ins. The third-place pick was a little tougher. You can pick a
flaw in a lot of very good candidates. Brady's interception rate has spiked to
the point where he won't be able to repeat. Carson Wentz is
two (and in some cases three) games behind the competition, although his rate
stats are excellent. Ben
Roethlisberger hasn't been accurate enough to keep up, which is
remarkable given that he has a 64.5 percent completion percentage. (League
average is 65.2 percent.) Rivers has thrown only 246 passes, which is good
for his arm but keeps him from racking up the cumulative totals to get in the
top three.
Two young NFC passers came up narrowly short. Jared Goff is
playing well, but he has slipped some after that incredible prime-time game
against the Vikings. From Week 5 on, Goff has completed 64.2 percent of his
passes and posted a 100.9 passer rating, which is 11th in the league. By Total
QBR, his 64.0 mark is 13th. He certainly hasn't been bad, of course, but the
standards at the top of the charts here are higher than they've ever been
before. He has fallen to fifth in both passer rating and QBR, which is where he
ranks here.
I'm also narrowly eliminating Cam Newton,
although I've been pleasantly surprised to be totally wrong about Norv Turner
and the Panthers' offense this season. Instead of trying to revert to some
antiquated offensive scheme, Turner has turned Newton and the offense loose.
Plenty of teams run jet sweeps and end-arounds in 2018, but the Panthers mix in
reverses and even the rare double reverse for big plays, like the one we saw to
Samuel on Sunday.
The only thing I'd fault Newton for in this offense is a
relatively conservative passing game. The Panthers have successfully
jump-started his completion percentage over 60 percent and all the way to a
staggering 67.3 percent, but Newton is averaging just 7.2 yards per attempt,
which is below the league average of 7.6 yards per pass attempt this season. He
makes up for that to some extent by racking up 355 rushing yards, but even
those runs have required 62 carries, which is far more than any other passer.
(Those numbers don't include kneel-downs.) His numbers are very good, but
they're just a tad below our top three MVP candidates.
I recognize that 2018 has been a higher-scoring campaign
than 2016, but compare Ryan's first eight games of 2018 with the first eight
games of his MVP campaign under Kyle Shanahan in 2016:
|
YEAR
|
CMP
|
ATT
|
CMP%
|
YDS
|
Y/ATT
|
TD
|
INT
|
PASSER RATING
|
QBR
|
|
2016
|
193
|
279
|
69.2%
|
2636
|
9.4
|
19
|
4
|
115.8
|
77.7
|
|
2018
|
213
|
301
|
70.8%
|
2685
|
8.9
|
19
|
3
|
115.1
|
74.8
|
Yes, Ryan is not going to get as much consideration because
his defense stinks and his team is a distant third at 4-4 in the NFC South, but
he has been every bit as good as the guy we saw win MVP two years ago. Keep in
mind he was doing that with a better offensive line and Freeman as his lead
back in the running game. This version of Ryan has Calvin Ridley,
which helps, but the Boston College product just went five-plus games without
an interception before throwing a pick on Sunday afternoon. If the Falcons make
their way back into the wild-card hunt in the NFC, Ryan deserves MVP chatter.
Let's work through these two together, since they stand
apart for me. The most obvious difference is the touchdown total. Mahomes has
29 touchdown passes. Twenty-nine! Brees has 18. Andrew Luck has
23, and nobody else in the league tops 20. The second-year sensation Mahomes is
throwing for touchdowns on 9.1 percent of his passes, the second-highest mark
in the league behind Ryan
Fitzpatrick. The only passer to hit 9 percent in a 500-attempt
season is Aaron Rodgers in
2011. Tom Brady didn't
do it in 2007. Dan Marino didn't do it in 1984. This is a big advantage for
Mahomes.
And then, when you start working through the rest of the
categories, Brees picks up advantages, some significant. The veteran has thrown
one interception on 279 pass attempts. Mahomes has thrown seven in 317 tries,
although his pick on Sunday was essentially a Hail Mary after poor Chiefs
clock management. Mahomes is completing 66.2 percent of his passes. Brees is
completing 76.3 percent of his throws. Just as Mahomes is
challenging the touchdown record, Brees is threatening to take the completion
percentage record and jump it from 72.1 percent by more than 4 percentage
points. Completions can be overrated, but 40.9 percent of Brees' completions go
for first downs, which is well above the league average of 36.3 percent.
Mahomes is averaging nearly a full yard more per pass than
Brees, but a lot of that comes from his receivers' work on screens. Strip them
out and Brees is completing 74.9 percent of his passes and averaging 8.7 yards
per attempt. Mahomes is completing 61.9 percent of his non-screen passes while
averaging ... 8.7 yards per attempt. Both marks are great. You don't need me to
tell you Brees' is better.
Of course, while both teams have excellent weapons, there's a reason I ranked the Chiefs' weapons as the scariest in football
before the season. Brees' top two receivers are Michael
Thomas and Alvin Kamara.
Pretty terrifying. Mahomes gets to work with Tyreek Hill and Kareem Hunt.
Also scary. After that, though, Mahomes' next two guys up are Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins.
Brees is working with Benjamin
Watson and either Ted Ginn Jr. or
rookie Tre'Quan
Smith, depending on when you're judging the arsenals. Brees
has Ingram to help in pass protection and a better offensive line given
the injuries on the interior for the Chiefs, but Mahomes has more with which to
work.
I'm not exactly the QB wins type, but the Saints are 7-1 and
the Chiefs are 8-1. The Saints' lone loss came in a game against the Bucs in
which Brees put up 40 points and his defense allowed 48 points. The Chiefs'
lone loss came in a game in which Mahomes scored 40 points and his defense
allowed 43 points to the Patriots. The only thing I might mention is that Mahomes left a couple of would-be touchdowns on the table with bad throws
in the first half. It would be foolish to say Mahomes played badly,
but it also would be naive to pretend he couldn't have played better given the
opportunities at hand.
The case for Mahomes outside of the touchdowns isn't as
obvious, at least to me. He has thrown 38 more passes than Brees, the product
of not yet having his bye week. Mahomes offers far more with his legs than
Brees, as the Texas Tech product has 144 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 25
carries once you remove those pesky kneel-downs from his totals. Brees, ceding
touches in the running game to Taysom Hill,
has turned nine carries into 34 yards, although he also has two scores on
sneaks, which mitigates some of the gap between the two.
At the end of the day, there just isn't much between these two.
Brees has a passer rating of 120.6 and a Total QBR of 84.5. Mahomes has a
passer rating of 116.7 and a Total QBR of 85.4. They're 1-2 in each category.
Maybe I lean toward Brees because the sentimental, sappy side of me wants to
see the 39-year-old Brees finally win league MVP before he retires. If you
prefer Mahomes, I can't fault you. If Mahomes gets to 56 passing touchdowns and
breaks the league record in his first full year as a starter, I'll join you on
that side of the fence. For now, though, very narrowly, I lean toward Brees.
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