Althouse: "It wasn't the hardware he was after when the season began..."

February 1, 2015

"It wasn't the hardware he was after when the season began..."

"... but the award Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers received Saturday night at the NFL Honors event solidified his place among the league's all-time best."

18 comments:

Curious George said...: ...all-time best."

No. Not yet.; 2/1/15, 9:51 AM
campy said...: So the NFL now officially celebrates ball-inflation cheating. Good to know.; 2/1/15, 9:52 AM
traditionalguy said...: Show off quarterback.; 2/1/15, 9:54 AM
traditionalguy said...: Wait until tonight when we will get to see who is really the "good, brave, strong quarterback." Shhh, don't tell but his name is spelled W-i-l-s-o-n; 2/1/15, 9:57 AM
Original Mike said...: The Packers fired their Special Teams coach. Can't say I disagree.; 2/1/15, 10:02 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: Tom Brady has not won a Super Bowl since abandoning the mother of his child and hooking up with the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen.

It is The Curse of Gisele: a quarterback cannot win America's biggest game while married to a woman who prefers soccer over football.

As a Seattle fan I wish them many more years of togetherness.

I am Laslo.; 2/1/15, 10:05 AM
rehajm said...: Best prop bet- More fumbles: Tom Brady today with footballs or Bill de Blasio tomorrow with groundhogs?; 2/1/15, 10:16 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: It's been quite a while since I've been to one of those sports awards banquets.

Do they still serve you one of those little chilled fruit cup things?

They were pretty awful, back in the day. You could tell that the fruit was originally canned and that it had been portioned way in advance, sitting around, drying out.

I'm guessing that today's fruit cup is pretty good.

Progress.; 2/1/15, 10:20 AM
madAsHell said...: It's the maybe-next-year, sportsmanship award.

...and...oh yeah...GO HAWKS!!!

The bus system here in Seattle is flashing SEAHAWKS with the route number, and destination on the front of the bus. At first, I thought it was my imagination. Very subliminal.; 2/1/15, 10:52 AM
Beldar said...: The sportswriters who are permitted to vote for NFL MVP are geese, and JJ Watt was robbed. They should just change the name of the award to "Most Valuable QB."

Aaron Rodgers is a fine QB, but there are at least a small handful of others in the NFL in any given season, every season, who are roughly as good or better. But I've never seen an NFL player from a non-QB position have remotely the same impact on his team and its fortunes that JJ Watt had this year. (And yes, I was a fan when both Alan Page and Lawrence Taylor played; and they were magnificent; but even LT isn't JJ.); 2/1/15, 11:24 AM
Ann Althouse said...: @Beldar

The term is "most valuable," not highest level of excellence within the assigned role.

It's similar to the way in baseball the pitcher never has a shot at MVP.; 2/1/15, 11:42 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Here's a list of baseball MVP awards. Pitchers do win sometimes.; 2/1/15, 11:45 AM
Julie C said...: As for today's Superbowl, I'll paraphrase Henry Kissinger: too bad they can't BOTH lose!

I'm not a Packer fan but I do like Aaron Rodgers.; 2/1/15, 12:02 PM
mtrobertsattorney said...: Let it not be forgotten that Aaron Rodgers, J.J. Watt and Scott Walker all have the same thing in common: Wisconsin; 2/1/15, 1:55 PM
Bob R said...: Just on pure eyeball test I think Rodgers is the best passer I've seen. (Probably tied with Marino.) It's so hard to compare quarterbacks of different eras. They can get so much more yardage now; it's so much easier to score. That empowers the moronic ring counters. (I've actually heard someone with a BAC under .20 say that Eli Manning was a better QB than Dan Marino, because, hey, 2 is more than 0.); 2/1/15, 2:14 PM
William said...: Are QBS at risk for post concussive dementia? I think the risk for them is lower than for other football players. They lead such charmed lives.....I don't have that much envy for billionaires. A lot of them don't seem to be having that much fun. NFL QBS lead the most enviable lives on earth. Is there some way that the government can cut them down to size?; 2/1/15, 3:03 PM
Bob R said...: Jim McMahon is one case. On the other hand, Troy Aikman reportedly had 7 or 8 concussions and seems to show no signs of dementia. (Idiocy is another story.); 2/1/15, 4:14 PM
Beldar said...: My argument is precisely that Watt was more valuable to his team than Aaron Rodgers was to his, as individual players in their specific teams during this specific season.

The sportswriters' voting patterns reveal an overwhelmingly consistent and limiting assumption: Because the quarterback position, over time and league-wide, is what teams "build franchises/dynasties on," the quarterback position is the most important position. Okay, fine.

Then acknowledge that thumb on the scale, and call this the "Most Valuable Quarterback Award."

This year in Houston, we had a carousel of no-name quarterbacks, capped by the re-appearance of undrafted and cut Case Keenum (whom local fans nevertheless adore because of the records he set in college at the University of Houston). No one who played quarterback for the Texans was valuable this year.

Despite that, JJ Watt took the Texans onto his broad back and carried them to the final dozen minutes of the last quarter of the last game of the regular season before their playoff chance was eliminated.

There's nothing Rodgers did this year that he hasn't done before, and that other QBs didn't do this year.

Nobody in the league did for his team what JJ Watt did this season.; 2/1/15, 4:15 PM