Why Drew Brees deserves the NFL MVP award and probably won't get it
The case for Patrick Mahomes as MVP is as easy as a smartphone click: A video of him firing a no-look pass. A clip of him chucking a no-chance ball into a sliver of a window to get a first down. A GIF of him in warmups, seemingly throwing a football over the Arrowhead Stadium scoreboard.
The tweets about him accumulating more fantasy points than any quarterback ever, or becoming only the second quarterback to rack up 50 touchdowns and 5,000 yards in one season – at age 23!
The case for Drew Brees as MVP is not as easy to conjure. But that doesn’t make it any less convincing.
I have a vote for MVP this year. The Associated Press asks that I not divulge my choice before I make it. However I believe the case for Brees is too easily diminished in an era when exclamations and highlights are so intrinsic in how we look at sport. Just about every single Patrick Mahomes highlight looks different, and just about every single Drew Brees highlight looks the same. That should not be held against the Saints quarterback.
“Most Valuable” is always a tricky category. In one sense, Russell Wilson should be the MVP over Brees and Mahomes because the Seahawks’ offensive cupboard is so bare without him. You can say this about Tom Brady as well, who is getting almost no buzz for MVP despite another very valuable season.
The value of a quarterback is in executing the offense with as few mistakes as possible, and with the best overall results. Throwing a ton of touchdowns, or for a ton of yards, is great. Maximizing wins and minimizing errors is better. And by that (admittedly personal) measure, Brees has had arguably the best passing season ever.
This year, Brees completed 74.4 percent of his passes, which is the best in NFL history. He passed the prior mark, which was set last season, by Drew Brees. Only 11 times in the history of the NFL has a quarterback completed more than 70 percent of his throws. Brees did it five of those 11 times. He is the most accurate passer in NFL history.
Still, this is not a lifetime achievement award. Brees wouldn’t want a career valedictory any more than he would want a rocking chair. This award is about only 2018. Yet there too, Brees has Mahomes beat in several key categories. The Chiefs quarterback had a 113.8 passer rating, good for top 10 all-time. Brees did better: 115.7. Brees led the league in fourth-quarter comebacks and game-winning drives. Mahomes had 12 interceptions on the season; Brees had five. Mahomes was sacked 26 times to Brees’ 17. Interceptions and sacks arise from a combination of factors, but this is certain: Brees almost never puts his defense in a bad spot.
And the Saints had more wins, which is never a full view of a player’s worth on its own, but it should matter when two offensive players are this good and this closely matched. Keep in mind the Chiefs had more Pro Bowl players on offense (five including Mahomes) than the Saints did (four including Brees). So it’s hard to say Brees had more to work with than Mahomes, especially when you look at Tyreek Hill’s speed and Travis Kelce’s size. In one game last month, Brees threw four touchdowns to four undrafted players in one game. (The vintage Brees quote after the game gave the other guys all the credit: “It says a lot about them.”) If the MVP is the best player on the best regular-season team, the MVP is Brees.
There’s a stylistic aspect to this, too. Mahomes has been dazzling, a veritable magician in every single game. That kind of consistency draws eyes and praise, as it should. But there’s magic in precision as well. A play that goes exactly according to plan is in a way more valuable than one that is saved at the last possible moment. There’s value in reliability too, even if it’s machine-like. Especially if it’s machine-like. Ask a running back out on a screen, a wide receiver counting strides, or a lineman counting split-seconds as he pushes back on an end rusher.
“Drew’s not going to get up 8 yards on a five-step drop,” says former Saints offensive lineman Zach Strief. “As a lineman, that couldn’t be more valuable.”
On Pro Football Reference, Patrick Mahomes is listed with four nicknames: Showtime, The Musician, Fatrick, The Gunslinger. That goes to how hard it is to come up with words to describe his magnificence. For Brees, though, it’s harder. Words fail and in some sense, so do images. Near-perfect is what he is, but even that adjective feels inadequate. Pro Football Reference has no listed nickname for Brees. He’s just “Drew Christopher Brees.”
Perhaps “MVBrees” is most fitting.
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