Tom Brady: Why winning a third NFL MVP award is irrelevant this season
By Matty Simo
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is the NFL MVP favorite this season. But find out why the award should not matter based on other recent winners.
Matt Ryan of the Atlanta Falcons earned NFL MVP honors last year for the first time in his career. But the Atlanta quarterback’s dream season ultimately fell short when he saw his team collapse against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. Brady finished second in NFL MVP voting but won Super Bowl MVP after leading the Patriots to their fifth victory in the big game thanks to the biggest comeback ever.
Brady has taken home Super Bowl MVP awards in four of his team’s five wins and probably should have won a fifth (which went to wide receiver Deion Branch). The regular-season NFL MVP award is a completely different animal though. That’s because no player has won the NFL MVP and a Super Bowl in the same year since Kurt Warner of the St. Louis Rams in 1999. Think about that for a second.
NFL MVP vs. NBA MVP
Winning NFL MVP has become like winning NBA MVP. It does not necessarily go to the best player but rather often rewards the best individual statistical campaign. And it does not really matter in the big scheme of things, anyway.
Michael Jordan could have been named NBA MVP the last 10 full seasons he played with the Chicago Bulls. The same can be said for LeBron James over the past decade. What matters more is championships, which is why Jordan is still widely considered the best basketball player of all-time. A perfect 6-0 record in the NBA Finals with six NBA Finals MVP awards should give Jordan a slight edge over James depending on how the latter’s career ends. James is 3-5 in the NBA Finals.
Brady’s Legacy
Getting back to Brady, he has led New England to a 5-2 record in its last seven Super Bowl appearances. The two times he did win NFL MVP (2007 and 2010), the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and fell in the Divisional Round of the playoffs to the New York Jets, respectively. In other words, Pats fans definitely should not want him to win it again this year.
In fact, three of the last four NFL MVPs have lost the Super Bowl. The other was Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers in 2014, and he did not even get there. Brady’s Hall of Fame legacy has already been established, and he does not need another NFL MVP to prove anything. Awards are nice, but championships are sacred. A sixth Super Bowl ring would cement Brady as the best player ever.