Tom Brady Steals Single MVP Vote, Denying Peyton Manning Unanimous Selection
Tom Brady, the veteran New England Patriots quarterback who led his injury-depleted team to a 12-4 record and the AFC Championship game, scored a single vote in the race for NFL MVP, denying Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning what would have been only the second unanimous MVP election in NFL history.
The first and so far only player to win the NFL MVP Award unanimously, with all 50 votes in the Associated Press media poll that determines the league’s Most Valuable Player?
Tom Brady.
Brady took home the MVP with a 50 for 50 tally for his performance in the 2010 season, when the Patriots put up a 14-2 regular season record and advanced to the Super Bowl, where they lost to the New York Giants. Tom Brady passed for 36 touchdowns that season with only four interceptions. He set a record by throwing 335 passes without getting picked off.
But in the 2013 season, Peyton Manning had what many football experts call the greatest season ever by a quarterback, throwing for an astonishing, record-setting 55 touchdowns and 5,477 yards while the Broncos finished at 13-3. They defeated Tom Brady and the Patriots in the AFC Championship to win a trip to the Super Bowl.
But among the many injuries and absences suffered by the Patriots in 2013, Brady played all or most of the season without his best receivers. Tight end Rob Gronkowski missed most of the season with injury, tight end Aaron Hernandez remains in jail facing murder charges and wide receiver Wes Welker left before the season as a free agent to join Peyton Manning and the Broncos.
The one vote for Brady this year came from Sirius XM radio host Jim Miller, a former NFL quarterback who played for eight different teams in his career, including the New England Patriots where he backed up Tom Brady in 2004. Though he did not play any significant downs that season, he collected a Super Bowl Championship ring when the Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I didn’t vote that way to disrespect Peyton Manning or anything he’s done, or anything he’s accomplished,” Miller told ESPN.com‘s Mike Reiss. “In my experiences, in over 17 years of playing the quarterback position, I just feel what Tom Brady did this year was pretty amazing.”
Miller stood pretty much alone in that opinion. Frank Schwab, columnist for Yahoo! Sports, typified prevailing sentiments when he wrote, “Brady is a great player, but it’s absurd that Manning didn’t win unanimously. There’s no significant measure in which Brady was better, except that Manning had better teammates.”
But there were some who didn’t buy the argument that having better players should not figure into voting. Writing on Sports World News, Greg Archuleta pointed out, “not only does Manning have better players, but the difference in the supporting casts is night and day.”
Noting that the Broncos and Patriots played each other twice, each team winning once, the writer notes that if Tom Brady had a healthy Gronkowski in the AFC Championship game, it may have been the Patriots headed to the Super Bowl.
So maybe a single MVP vote for Tom Brady isn’t so absurd after all.
