The case against Tom Brady for MVP isn't complicated, most definitely isn't personal and hasn't changed since Week 5. But with the regular season over and the voting happening for real, it's an important one to make.
Brady is brilliant, and his season was brilliant. The problem is that it wasn't a season. It was three-quarters of a season. And that's why Brady shouldn't win this particular award this particular year.
What Brady did this year was show up in Week 5 and play like the best quarterback in the league from that point on for a team that was doing just fine without him. That's pretty good, and in a year when the rest of the MVP field was weak, it would be enough to justify giving him the award.
But this is not such a year. And as MVP-worthy categories go, "games played" is and must be among the most important. A player's availability to his team is the place for any and all discussions of "value" to begin. And while you can argue about whether he should or shouldn't have been suspended, it is objectively not in dispute that Brady missed the first four games of the 2016 season.
Matt Ryan didn't. Ezekiel Elliott didn't. Derek Carr didn't. Aaron Rodgers didn't. Each one of those guys answered the bell every single game until Carr got hurt in Week 16 and Elliott got a well-earned day off in Week 17, at which point his considerable value to his team was established. Each one of those guys had an MVP-worthy season. And because they did, there's no reason to rush off and hand the award to someone who played only three-quarters of a season when they all played basically the whole thing.
If Brady's performance were leaps and bounds ahead of Ryan's, then there'd be a different argument to make. But it wasn't. Sure, a 28-to-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio is eye-popping, record-setting and worthy of awe. But if you lop off the first four games of Ryan's season, his is 27-to-5, which isn't that far off. Ryan's actual, full-season number of 38-to-7 makes his case even more strongly.
For the season, Ryan beat Brady in completion percentage, yards per game, yards per attempt, passer rating and Total QBR. Ryan beat everybody in those last three categories. He did it for a team that had a far less effective defense than Brady's. The Patriots held opponents to a league-low 15.6 points per game, while Atlanta allowed 25.4. Ryan did it while taking 37 sacks, while Brady took only 15.
There's a similar case to be made for Elliott, who functioned for 15 games as the indefatigable engine for an offense built around the run and a team whose 13-3 record was second only to New England's. Elliott led the league in rushing by more than 300 yards as Dallas won nine more games than it did a year ago. Fellow rookie Dak Prescott deserves consideration as well, having won three games while Brady was sitting by the pool in September.
I'm still waiting for someone to make the case FOR Brady -- namely, how his 2016 accomplishments set him so far apart from the rest of the MVP field that we should overlook the missed games. I'm as impressed by Brady and as appreciative of his brilliance as anyone, but as far as I can tell, the reason people are voting for him for MVP is because they can't believe he's so good at 39, or because he's delivering a performance that underscores his career body of work. That's not what this award is for. It's for the player most valuable to his team this season. For one-quarter of this season, Brady was of literally no value to the Patriots whatsoever.
"As MVP-worthy categories go, 'games played' is and must be among the most important. A player's availability to his team is the place for any and all discussions of 'value' to begin."
Please think about that last sentence, because it's not throwaway hyperbole. If Brady had been injured and missed four games, he still could have been of some value -- as an in-game sounding board for backups Jimmy Garoppolo or Jacoby Brissett, or as a helpful observer at practice. As it stands, Brady was not in one single meeting, didn't attend one single practice and wasn't in the stadium for any of the team's first four games. He was prohibited from having any football-related contact with teammates or coaches. Assuming he followed those rules, he made absolutely no contribution to anything the Patriots did for the first four weeks of the season.
Now, again, this argument has nothing to do with the REASON Brady missed those games. I have written and said many times that a four-game suspension for Brady was not justified, and I stand by that. Some have suggested that it's "not fair" to hold it against Brady that he missed four games for what most people seem to agree was a pretty dumb reason.
But the counterargument is that it's not fair to the full-season candidates to give the award to Brady on the assumption that his full season would have measured up to theirs. If he'd struggled out of the gate the way, say, Rodgers did, and then had the same final 12 games he had, would that make his case weaker? Stronger? Either?
You can make the case that Brady was the best player in the league at the most important position from Week 5 on. But Matt Ryan played like the best quarterback in the league from Week 1 on and deserves to win it over Brady. So does Elliott, and what Rodgers did for the Packers with literally no running backs is worthy of consideration over Brady because Rodgers played all 16 games.
It's a tough break for Tom, but I'm sure he'll survive. He's as great a quarterback as there's ever been, and a month or so from now he might be a five-time Super Bowl champion. But he shouldn't be the MVP. Not this year.