Midseason NFL awards, including Tom Brady for MVP
As the season reaches its halfway mark, Brady's currently the favorite to win MVP but several other quarterbacks are still in contention for the award.
A crazy NFL season got crazier over the weekend. Six of the top 10 teams lost, including four of the top six in the NFC. More quarterbacks got banged up as injuries continued to mount throughout the league.
But there nonetheless was some stellar individual play in the first half of the season. With nine of the 18 regular season weeks complete, we hand out some midseason awards:
MVP: QB Tom Brady, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
This category would have gotten a different answer at several points this season. Early, it might have been Bills quarterback Josh Allen. A couple of weeks ago, it might have been Kyler Murray of the Cardinals. Before Sunday night’s blowout loss to the Titans, you could have made an argument for Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford.
But we’ll go with Brady, who has been consistently excellent in leading the Bucs to a 6-2 start. He’s completing 67.3% of his throws, the third-highest rate of his career. He leads the league with 25 touchdown passes and has thrown for 2,650 yards, putting him on pace for more than 50 TDs and 5,000 yards.
Expect the MVP race to be competitive throughout the second half. But if Brady stays steady, he should have a great shot at winning it for the fourth time.
Offensive player of the year: WR Cooper Kupp, Los Angeles Rams
This award has increasingly gone to the best non-quarterback on offense, and through the first half of the season, Kupp has stood out the most in that category. He leads the league with 74 receptions, 1,019 yards and 10 touchdown catches. He’s averaging 113.2 receiving yards per game, which has raised the possibility of him having a 2,000-yard season. Kupp became the first player since Jerry Rice in 1990 to have 1,000 yards and 10 or more touchdowns in the first 10 games.
Just as importantly, he’s a critical piece for a Rams team that is still a Super Bowl contender, even after Sunday’s setback against Tennessee.
Defensive player of the year: DE Myles Garrett, Cleveland Browns
Usually this spot is reserved for Aaron Donald, and he is again having a great season as an interior disrupter for the Rams. But Garrett could be on a record-setting pace. He leads the NFL with 12 sacks and 12 tackles for losses and has 23 hits on the quarterback. He could surpass his previous season-high sack total, 13.5, in the next couple of games.
The Browns got back on track with a big win over the Bengals on Sunday, and they could be a factor in the AFC playoff race. Cleveland’s defense has been great all season, and Garrett is a big reason.
Offensive rookie of the year: WR Ja’Marr Chase, Cincinnati Bengals
This is the biggest runaway of all the awards. Chase is putting up the best stats ever assembled by a rookie wide receiver. In nine games, he has 44 receptions for 835 yards and seven touchdowns. He’s averaging 19 yards per catch and 92.8 yards per game.
The Bengals took some criticism for picking Chase over offensive tackle Penei Sewell. Many people outside of the Bengals thought they had such a need for offensive line help that taking a wide receiver would be a second or third option. The Bengals wanted to pair Chase with Joe Burrow, his college teammate and friend from LSU, and they’ve been proved right – no quarterback-receiver combo has been better during the first half of the season.
Defensive rookie of the year: LB Micah Parsons, Dallas Cowboys
Before the draft, scouts felt Parsons and cornerback Patrick Surtain were the best defensive players in the class. While Surtain has had a strong start for the Broncos, Parsons has been the best rookie on defense this season.
He has been a mainstay for the Cowboys’ defense, alternating between playing off-ball linebacker and rushing the passer. He has five sacks, 14 quarterback hits and 52 tackles in eight games. The improvement of the Dallas defense this season has helped it get off to a 6-2 start, and Parsons has been a big part of it.
Coach of the year: Sean Payton, New Orleans Saints
This may change, depending on where the Saints end up in the standings now that quarterback Jameis Winston is done for the season. But what Payton did during the first half was remarkable.
He started the season down as many as nine starters because of salary cap casualties and other losses, including top wide receiver Michael Thomas, who will miss the entire season because of injury. His receiving corps might be the worst in the NFL, yet somehow he was able to engineer a strong offense with Winston at the helm in the first year following Drew Brees’s retirement, leading the Saints to a 5-2 start before Sunday’s loss to the Falcons.
Payton went with Trevor Siemian as the starter against Atlanta, and if he gets New Orleans to the playoffs with a combination of Siemian and Taysom Hill behind center, he’ll have certainly earned this award. We’ll have to see if he decides to pursue Philip Rivers, who has completed his season as a high school coach and has hinted he might be interested in coming out of retirement to finish out the season.
Comeback player of the year: QB Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys
After Prescott suffered a severe ankle injury last season, many wondered if he could make it back for the start of the 2021 campaign. Not only has he made it back, but he has been a stud.
In fact, Prescott has deserved consideration in the MVP race at times this season, although his missing one game with a hurt calf (unrelated to last year’s injury) and Sunday’s blowout loss to Denver have temporarily taken him out of it. But in seven games, Prescott has completed a career-best 69.4% of his passes while throwing for 2,045 yards and 18 touchdowns.
The Cowboys’ offense is one of the NFL’s best, and Prescott has done an excellent job of leading it. Dallas is running away with the NFC East and will be in the mix for the conference’s top seed.
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