Drew Brees for MVPHalfway through the season, believing that anyone other than Aaron Rodgers would win the MVP stretched the limits of credibility. Drew Brees threw ten of his 14 interceptions in the first half of the season, and through eight weeks, the Saints were only a 5-3 team. He wasn't really a factor.

Then Brees went bananas, throwing for 27 TDs and four interceptions over his last eight games, and throwing for more than 300 yards in each of his last seven.

[ Related: The MVP case for Aaron Rodgers ]

Brees destroyed Dan Marino's single-season passing yards record. He also broke NFL records for completions in a season and completion percentage in a season. These things make it easy to argue that Drew Brees' 2011-2012 regular season was the best season that a quarterback has ever had. And if it's the best season any quarterback has ever had, surely it merits this season's MVP award.

The points to be made in arguing for Brees over Rodgers:

• Brees had significantly more passing yardage than

Matt Flynn delivers the low-five

See Sunday's five least valuable players here.

Matt Flynn, QB, Green Bay Packers. The year 2011 was home to the best football quarterbacking human history has ever seen, so it seems fitting to end the regular season with an all-quarterback edition of the weekly MVPs. The least likely of the bunch? Green Bay backup Matt Flynn throwing for 480 yards and six touchdowns. Rex Ryan is sitting around this morning hoping that Green Bay once again gets the itch to elevate a backup quarterback and dump their starting quarterback on the Jets.

Drew Brees, QB, New Orleans Saints. Maybe the oddest thing about Matt Flynn's performance is that he threw for six touchdowns and still didn't have the best quarterback rating on the day. That honor went to the great Drew Brees, who just wrapped up the best statistical season a quarterback has ever had. He added five touchdowns and 389 yards to his season today ‒ making it 5,476 yards and 46 TDs on the year. And he did this with a completion percentage of

Terence Newman and Orlando Scandrick chasing Hakeem Nicks

See Sunday's five most valuable players here.

Terence Newman and Orlando Scandrick, CBs, Dallas Cowboys. I couldn't pick just one, so they'll have to share, which I don't think they'll mind, since they both appeared to be so generous to Giants wide receivers on Sunday night. Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz took turns beating them, in any way they wanted to get beat ‒ getting position on them, outrunning them, outjumping them. Even fullback Henry Hynoski used Newman as his personal jump rope. Obviously, there are some personnel deficiencies there, but it also makes me wonder about Rob Ryan. If you're one of the best defensive coordinators in the league, should your team be having problems like that in week 17?

Mark Sanchez, QB, New York Jets. Two pretty good defenses went at each other in Miami on Sunday, which left this as a battle of which quarterback could be less bad; Mark Sanchez or Matt Moore. Moore threw two run-of-the-mill interceptions, and Sanchez threw three pretty remarkable

Tom Brady was intercepted by Nick Barnett on Sunday afternoon, then Barnett put together a nifty 33-yard return.

Fifteen of those yards were negated, though, by a call that can only be made if an official is looking directly at Tom Brady the entire time, thinking to himself, "None of you jerks better hit my Handsome Tom."

Unfortunately, someone (kind of) hit Handsome Tom.

If contact that light draws someone a 15-yard penalty, then the league probably owes Gisele Bundchen about 13,343,925 penalty yards.

And please understand, I'm not one of those people who thinks it's okay to just destroy someone away from the play after a turnover. I'll always believe that what Warren Sapp did to Chad Clifton was unnecessary, malicious and inexcusable.

In this case, however, Tom Brady is near that play, and running to get closer to it. He could almost even be mistaken for a football player. Drayton Florence didn't blindside him and didn't cheap shot him ‒ that barely even qualifies as a hit.

Bryan Braman of the Houston Texans is an undrafted rookie free agent special teams player. I'm assuming he's aware of the ongoing discussion of the dangers of helmet-to-helmet hits. I'm also assuming, based on what you're about to see below, that he just doesn't care.

That's not a helmet-to-helmet hit, that's a player intentionally ramming his head, unprotected by a helmet, into another player's helmet. I'm not a physician or anything, but if a helmet-to-helmet hit is a dangerous, I think we can infer that a noggin-to-helmet hit is also pretty dangerous.

There's an instinct to applaud the man for his hustle, and his willingness to sacrifice himself to make a play. This is something that belongs on Jack Lambert's highlight reel.

But if we're trying to protect players and trying to get them to understand the long-term dangers of repeated blows to the head, shouldn't we also discourage something like this?

I mean, I don't know what we're supposed to tell the guy. It is, after all,

Taking the day off for the Packers on Sunday: Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews, Charles Woodson and a bunch of others. Taking this particular play off: All functioning portions of kick returner Pat Lee's brain.

The ball had already gone into the endzone, bounced off Lee's shins, and then went back out. Lee stayed in the endzone, but reached out of it to grab the ball, then brought it back in and took a knee. You can't do that. Well, I suppose you can, but it's going to be a safety.

It was called a safety on the field and was held up upon review, giving the Lions a 9-0 lead. The Packers aren't terribly concerned about winning in week 17, but this still isn't going to make anyone too happy on film day.

It's 2012 now, everybody, which means we don't have long left to go. That being the case, I'm hoping that the new year will bring us the best and most fun NFL calendar year we've ever had. Here are my five New Years wishes towards that end.

Hi Peyton5. A healthy neckbone for Peyton Manning. I've been assuming, and it seems like most others have, too, that Peyton Manning will just show up next summer with a healthy neck and a can-do attitude. I'm not so sure this will be the case.

Once upon a time, we all thought it was a given that he'd start in the first week of the season. "Ah, he'll play," we said, chalking it up to the toughness, competitiveness and longevity that had defined his career for over a decade. As it turns out, whatever mystery ailment is in his neck has been nasty enough to conquer all of that. Which means it's pretty damn nasty.

Manning hasn't hit one of his recovery deadlines (imaginary and media-inspired as they may be) yet. He wasn't ready for the opener. He wasn't ready a

The absurdly premature playoff picture presents one man's projection for the NFL playoffs, at each given week in the season ‒ even if that week is unreasonably early. Which, of course, it no longer is.

A3P2011 - Week17

• The biggest, most obvious and media-friendly playoff spot left resides, of course, in the NFC East, where the playoffs for the Cowboys and Giants start this week. The situation is "win and you're in," which isn't convenient for either team, since their recent pattern has been "win and then play so poorly next week that you bring shame upon your entire families." I'm going with Dallas because the Giants played well against the Jets, and thus, are due to trip over their own shoelaces this week. The Cowboys were mauled last week, and thus, will probably look like worldbeaters this week. It's just science, really.

• That's pretty much it for NFC changes. New Orleans could also still grab the two-seed, but that would involve the San Francisco 49ers losing to the Rams, and again, I don't