My friend Jason has asked me if I could make the case for Drew Brees over LaDainian Tomlinson for MVP. I'm sure it will not surprise anyone that I do indeed have an opinion on this, so (at the risk of furthering my wife's opinion that I am in love with a certain NFL QB) here are my thoughts as well as a plethora of stats to back up my assertions.
1. Most VALUABLE player. LaDainian Tomlinson puts up great numbers and scores seemingly multiple times ever single game. However, he also plays with a talented QB (Phllip River's numbers compare favorably to Drew Brees' in SD last year) and a dominant defense (giving up less than 100 yards rushing is just one of their impressive statistics). LT also plays for the always conservative Marty Schottenheimer for whom the term "Marty Ball" was coined to describe a coach who gets a small lead and then runs the ball to avoid turnovers and run the clock down. This means that there are games where LT is frequently piling up yards long after games are over and in situations where most coaches would not dare run the ball, giving him much inflated stats. Despite all of this, LT only contributes 41% of his team’s offensive yardage. Drew Brees is vastly more valuable as he contributes over 75% of his team’s total yards despite not having any of the factors that inflate how good he and his team are. It's hard to make an argument that a player that makes up three-quarters of his teams offense is not more valuable than a guy who makes up less than half of his team's offense. Plus, Brees has been responsible for nearly two thirds of this teams first down, while LT is apart of less than half of first downs for his team.
2. Vast improvement. Brees has increased NO's yardage 27% over the year before (SD's yardage per game has only change less than 5%) over the previous year. But all that would be meaningless without improvements in wins. Brees has taken a team that won 3 games last year and has not made the playoffs since 2000 and led them to a NFC South Division championship. Making that fact more impressive is the fact that the NFC South was said in the preseason to be one of the toughest in football and was the home of Sports Illustrated's pick for Super Bowl Champion, the Carolina Panthers. Individually, Brees has improved his completions, completion percentage, yards per game, and TDs while decreasing the number of turnovers he has thrown.
3. The preseason poll factor. Every year in college football is a preseason poll. The poll is based on nothing but opinions (no game have been played to have concrete data!), but anyone not in the top 10 will certainly have a hard time moving up. Consider undefeated Boise State which started so low in the preseason polls that it was impossible to gain enough respect to crack the top two. Now in the NFL, LT was obviously going to be considered a MVP candidate before the season even started. He was coming off an impressive year and was virtually unanimous in being a top three fantasy pick. So LT has always been front and center in the race. Drew Brees was almost an afterthought; not just of NFL players, but of the free agent class. Daunte Culpepper and Terrell Owens were seen as much bigger free agent signings than Brees. They both got considerable attention in the preseason. Overall, Brees was barely ranked in the top 15 of most sources fantasy picks, not overall, but of quarterbacks. This inattention has always surrounded Brees since his college days at Purdue where he broke multiple Big 10 records, but could only manage a top four finish for the Heisman trophy. Despite all of this lack of knowledge about Brees, media, players, coaches and fans have elevated him into the top two of the MVP discussion. He has impressed virtually everyone with his play this year and is largely seen as one of the main reasons that this New Orleans team has been turned around. The fact that Brees' name is even in the MVP discussion is a testament to how well he has played because so often MVP discussions center around "big name" players, not who is playing the best or is actually the most valuable to his team.
4. Community impact. Everyone knows of the devastation that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast area have suffered. Brees and his wife decided when he came to New Orleans that they would move into the heart of the city, near places hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. Brees, despite not being from the area or even having ties to the Gulf Coast, has been seen out in the community meeting people, giving donations and has set up his own charity for the people of the area. ESPN sportswriter Bill Simmons even commented that Brees probably deserved Sports Illustrated's Man of the Year because of all his contributions to the city and surrounding neighborhoods. While other professional athletes are giving their sports a black mark with suicide attempts, gun charges, shootings at strip clubs, spitting on players, and brawls on the field, Brees has become a national example of how athletes should act in their community.
5. History. Major League Baseball has the same discussion every year: How to compare a DH or pitcher to an everyday player. Pitchers only pitch every three to five days, DHs don't play offense, but position players are on the field for usually nine innings, everyday of the season. That is one reason why only one non-everyday position player has been a league MVP in the last 20 years. The same logic could apply to football. Drew Brees has taken over 900 snaps this season whereas LT has only touched the ball 366 times. Brees' position is far more complex than LT's. Quarterbacks must make quick reads, call audibles, and make sure the ball gets to the correct player. No one doubts the performance LT has put on this year, but the quarterback position has a built in degree of difficulty that makes what Brees has done even more impressive. That is why, like baseball considering everyday position players as more valuable a player than pitchers and DHs, historically more QBs have been named MVP than any other position.
6. Drew Brees has a degree in Industrial Management from Purdue University ('01). I have no statistics to back this up, but it's pretty common knowledge that Industrial Management majors from Purdue are among the best at their professions and all around great guys.
Troy
BSIM, Purdue '99
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