Everything But Poker

Football is often called the ultimate team sport, a distinction that should make the determination of its most valuable player that much more difficult. Individual talents dominate sports like baseball and basketball. So whether a team is the best in the league or the worst, the most valuable players stand out simply because of the natures of the games. But it ain't so in football. The best individual performances are much more difficult to discern because they are inextricably linked to those around them – not to mention the effect that play-calling coordinators and opposing teams have on one’s statistical output. Basically, one person’s play cannot be responsible for a team’s record.**

**That is not to say that certain positions are not more important than others – quarterbacks are obviously the most important players on the field. But there is no method I know of to determine exactly the relative importance of each player on the field. As such, each player’s performance should be assessed in relation to the other players at his position, not to his team’s overall performance.

So when determining the NFL MVP, it must be important to look beyond team success, right? Because one player’s performance does not make a team great, and a team cannot be great without excelling in every phase of the game. All of which makes this year’s MVP race so interesting. Much of the discussion thus far has centered around three players: Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Brett Favre, the first two of which play quarterback for undefeated teams. While all three have played outstanding football this year, it seems as though Manning and Brees are the assumed frontrunners for the award almost by default – that because they play the most important position for league’s best teams, they must be the most valuable players.

Well, it just isn’t so. Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson is the NFL’s most valuable player. Through 13 games, Johnson leads the league in rushing yards (347 yards ahead of the next guy) and is on his way to breaking Marshall Faulk’s record for total yards from scrimmage (he needs 475 rushing and receiving yards in his final three games). He has scored 13 total touchdowns – seven of which came from more than 50 yards out – and is the only player averaging more than 100 rushing yards per game (he averages 125.1). His six rushing yards per attempt are more than a half yard better than the next best player, and could become the eighth player in NFL history to rush for 100 yards or more in eight straight games if he does so this weekend against Miami. Compared to any other running back, Chris Johnson is Zeus and they are those weird half-God/half-mortal characters like Achilles.

But his team is 6-7. It lost its first six games, then won its next five, lost one more and then blew out the Rams last week. MVPs can’t come from teams that don’t make the playoffs, let alone finish with losing records, right? Well, historically, this is right. It hasn’t happened before, and I don’t foresee that changing now, what with the All-American trio of gunslinging heroness standing before us. But have any of them really distinguished themselves from the rest of this year’s QB crop?

I know their teams don’t have perfect records and they aren’t sponsored by Wrangler, but Aaron Rodgers and Philip Rivers are putting up some damn good numbers and winning a lot of games that people didn’t expect them to win. And what about Manning’s 14 interceptions this season, fifth worst in the NFL? Aren’t Brees’ statistics worse than last year’s? Favre’s performance has actually been the most surprising and seemingly valuable of the three, but there is no statistical or circumstantial evidence pointing to his case for MVP. The fact is, Chris Johnson is the most dominant, valuable player this season, but his team’s record – combined with the perfect records of the Saints and Colts – will prevent him from even entering the discussion of MVP candidates.

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There is only one person in the National Football League for whom words of emotion are used in place of words aptitude: Brett Favre. Writers, broadcasters, coaches and even some players describe Favre in terms of his spiritual makeup and mental fortitude rather than his athletic ability, a phenomenon that has completely distorted the way in which we, as fans, have followed his career path, especially during the last three years. Yesterday words spread far and wide that Favre had returned to football once again, ending his second retirement to join the Minnesota Vikings, and those words, once again, had more to do with legacy, treason and revenge than actual ability.

There is a mystique to Brett Favre that persists no matter how he plays or how he behaves – an aura that previously would have been reserved only for Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett. Where the origin of that persona lies is unknown – his 269 consecutive starts, three MVPs, Super Bowl XXXI championship, or that 399-yard four-touchdown game the day after his father died – but it has undoubtedly transformed the way Favre operates within the otherwise rigid confines of NFL decorum. And it is especially shocking when juxtaposed in the football news cycle to Michael Vick’s return, Chad Ocho Cinco’s antics, Terrell Owens’ theatrics and the consistent dominance of teams such as the Patriots, Colts and Steelers.

Now, you probably just looked at the top of the page and figured out I’m a huge Steeler fan, but that has a lot to do with my point. The Steelers will never be nominated for any kind of sentimentality award – the idea of retaining a player simply as a matter of loyalty for years of service is offensive to fans and the ownership.

Steeler fans have watched countless Pro Bowlers and Hall of Famers walk away from Pittsburgh dejected once their pay rate exceeded their value on the field: Greg Lloyd, Rod Woodson, Carnell Lake, Yancey Thigpen, Levon Kirkland, Chad Brown, Kendrell Bell and, of course, Joey Porter, just to name the most recent. Each of these players put in a number of years of valuable service for the organization, and most of them helped lead the team to Super Bowl XXX. But when it became clear that their service with the Steelers had concluded, there were no games played, no fake retirements and no words of heresy or devotion. They were simply sent on their way to find another employer.

In March 2008, Favre announced his retirement after a surprisingly successful season, which ended one win (actually, one Favre interception) away from another Super Bowl appearance. Everyone thought he was going out as close to the top as he would ever get again, until rumors circulated a few months later that he wanted back in. Well, by that time the team had already named Aaron Rodgers its starting quarterback for the coming season – although it offered to bring Favre back to participate in a competition for the starting job. The old guy refused, bitched and moaned until he was traded to the Jets, and was applauded generously for turning the Jets’ season around.

But wait, the Jets finished 9-7 after starting the season 8-3, and weeks after the season ended team members revealed that Brett had done just about everything in his power to remove himself from the rest of the team, emotionally and physically. His play during the second half of the season was atrocious and his demeanor apparently poisonous, yet somehow organizations and sports writers fawn over this guy as though he can do no wrong. Shouldn’t the discussion about Favre’s signing have more to do with his deteriorating throwing ability and surgically reconstructed shoulder than the psychological effect of his signing with a former division rival?

Five or six years from now, when Peyton Manning starts throwing late-game interceptions, refusing to attend training camp because he despises staying in the dorms and slipping into obvious mediocrity, will owners still see him as the MVP he used to be and put up with all his childish behavior? Will they wait out his fake retirements even after they trade for potential replacement quarterbacks, as the Vikings did with Sage Rosenfels earlier this offseason? Will the media cover him the way they do T.O and Ocho Cinco, or Favre?

Football is a game that is goes beyond one player, and no matter how much the league and each team wants to promote quarterbacks as the face of the game, results ultimately sell tickets more than celebrity. Dan Marino, Jim Kelly and Troy Aikman decided to hang it up once their teams saw their cost exceeded their value. Joe Montana squeezed a couple more seasons out of his career with the Chiefs. The final chapter for Manning, Tom Brady, Donovan McNabb, Big Ben, Eli and Drew Brees remains to be seen.

But after this Favre fiasco, let's hope that those in charge of paying and reporting on these players understand that football goes on with or without these individual stars, and that their ability on the field is the only criteria by which they should be judged.