The NFL honors should be a time where we acknowledge the best players in the perspective category but this year it seemed far from that. I will say some of the awards were fairly given and well deserved, and they were even for the guys I wanted to win, but some of the categories missed the mark completely.
The MVP was fairly given, I think Lamar went off this season, as he lead one of the most dominant offenses in the league all the way to the conference finals. He threw for 3,678 yards and 24 touchdowns and is ranked top of the league. In my mind, there was no arguing this one. He just played a very high caliber of football and also used his legs a ton. He’s just an extremely versatile QB and he went crazy this year.
Comeback Player of the Year is where I start to disagree. Don’t get me wrong, Joe Flacco played crazy for the time he was needed in Cleveland, but Baker Mayfield did exactly what Flacco did—but for longer and made it farther in the playoffs. I felt like Baker Mayfield was absolutely snubbed of the award. The stats back it up as well; Flacco played in five games! He has 1,616 yards and 13 touchdowns to eight interceptions. Which don’t get me wrong, for a retired guy to step back and do that well in five games is impressive—but Baker did way better and played a whole year. Baker had 4044 yards and 28 touchdowns to his 10 interceptions. Baker had almost 3000 more yards in 12 games, had 15 touchdowns in 12 games and only two more interceptions. He literally carried the Buccaneers this year.
Defensive rookie of the year—there’s not much to say. I completely agree with this choice. Will Anderson had 45 tackles, 10 tackles for loss, 67 pressures, 7 sacks, one pass deflection, and one blocked field goal across 15 games. Also, his 7 sacks set a new rookie franchise record for most sacks in a single season. He also led all rookies in pressures. So it’s safe to say he was deserving and very dominant.
Offensive rookie of the year went to CJ Stroud, who also was the right athlete. He played absolutely amazingly, leading the Texans to the playoffs and to their first playoff in a while. Stroud had 4,108 yards, 23 touchdowns, and only five interceptions. He just had an absolute dominant year and the future is definitely bright in Houston.
The offensive player of the year was Christain McCaffrey who deserved it so much. McCaffrey rushed for 1,459 yards and had 14 touchdowns, which led the league in rushing for his second year and helped get his team to the Super Bowl. He was definitely their big piece for the 49ers this year.
Defensive player of the year is the one that has to be the stupidest one ever—don’t even get me started. It went to Myles Garret. But it should’ve gone to TJ Watt and here’s why. TJ had more tackles, more sacks, more interceptions, more fumbles recovered, he had more touchdowns, and more assisted tackles. But yet somehow they were like-wait but Myles Garret is better-absolutely not. TJ Watt has been snubbed so much and this year is the worst one yet. He is without a doubt the best defensive player in the league and my defensive player of the year.
Overall, it was a solid NFL awards show but there was a few major misses along the way that were definitely the wrong picks.
