MVP has been a hot topic of discussion, and this year there seems to be only two finalists: Aaron Rogers the Packers and Tom Brady of the Pirates.
Some will put Rams receiver Cooper Karp and Pony running back Jonathan Taylor on the discussion, but MVP is a quarterback-driven award because football is a quarterback-driven game. Joe Burrow has made a final effort over the past few weeks, but only as an alternative after Brady Rogers.
Although Rogers is temporarily ahead in betting odds, brady should be the most suitable candidate for MVP through the analysis of PFF scores and high-level data.
PFF high-order data
PFF Victory Contribution Value
After years of analyzing and scoring NFL games, the PFF developed an indicator of victory contribution value WAR to better assess a player's value, with an eye on contribution to game wins.
If judged by the PFF victory contribution value, Brady is undoubtedly the MVP of the season.
His WAR is as high as 4.70, the highest in the league this season. The second highest was Borrow's 4.05, while Rogers' 3.11 was sixth, 1.59 below Brady. Because of the importance of the quarterback position, their WAR is always the highest, and non-quarterback players don't actually have many chances.
PFF score and volume
While Brady's PFF score of 90.8 is slightly behind Borrow, it is already higher than the rest of the league quarterbacks. Essentially, Brady is being asked to do more than any quarterback in the league. In terms of creating victories for the team, a consistent and sustained high level of play has allowed Brady to far surpass others.
The Pirates' attack was driven entirely by Brady, with a large number of initial passes allowing Brady to carry the team forward throughout the game. Although Burrow had a high PFF rating, he also had four games in which he passed the ball and attacked less than 30 slots, and it wasn't until the second half of the season that the Tigers began to let him hit the ball hard. From this point of view, Brady has always been the only engine for the Pirates' attack.
As for Rodgers, he also had three passes in less than 30 slots, only six more than 40 slots, and even missed a game against the Chiefs. If we really take into account the importance of the game in the MVP discussions, it would be too much to hang up the free card in the rush showdown in Mahomes.
PFF scores are separated from team grades
Data like EPA, CPOE, and ESPN's QBR all have value, but they rely heavily on the support of teammates around the quarterback. Whether the receiver is out of hand, whether the defensive group can convert potential misses passing, etc., can not really reflect the true value of the quarterback through the above data, but the PFF score may be OK.
With that in mind, Brady's PFF rating is certainly higher than Rodgers', though we've seen how to take into account teammate differences that give Rogers an edge in some raw and high-level data.
Voters will surely see Rogers' fancy touchdown intercept ratio of 37-4, which of course has to do with Rogers' consistent aversion to the number of turnovers, but the truth of the game video restoration. Brady's potential misstep pass rate is 1.9 percent, lower than Rodgers' 2.0 percent.
Three of Brady's 12 interceptions this season came from receiving the ball and causing the interception, and the other was a gamble in The Million Blessing Mary, meaning that four of the interceptions were not potential missteps. Brady's 743 passes this season had only 14 potential misses, Rogers had 12 potential misses in 587 passes, and there were no bad luck with non-potential misses this season.
In fact, Brady's receivers have a higher turnover rate than Rogers'. Brady was 6.9 percent, the league's 19th highest, while Rogers was just 4.1 percent, fourth lowest. Counting only the number of yards flown in the air, Brady lost 548 yards in vain, while Rogers lost only 190 yards.
We can also see that Brady's receiver made eight steals in the red zone and the end zone, giving the pirates a lot less points, while Rogers only had five. PFF ratings focus more on the performance of the passers themselves, while the EPA relies more on teammates. All of these numbers suggest that Brady's PFF score is higher than Rogers', but Rogers' EPA figures are better than Brady's.
MVP moments
When we talk about MVP moments, Brady and Rogers have a lot of wonderful key performances, but perhaps Brady's best MVP moments don't appear on the stat sheet, or even in the game video.
In the much-publicized Brady vs. Belicek classic mentoring battle in the fourth week of the season, Antonio Brown took off one of the most legendary winning touchdowns of brady's Hall of Fame career, and the Pirates could only shoot a free kick. A wonderful big heart pass ended up being a pass that was not completed.
Regardless of the outcome of the pass, Brady became the fourth quarter magic man this season, taking away five waves of one-of-a-kind draws, including a 53-yard touchdown in overtime against Beal and a 93-yard touchdown reversal against the Jets last week. Last week's wave of attacks can not be ignored, because with little time and no timeout, Brady set off a wave of nine attacks to advance 93 yards, and finally hit Cyril Grayson, who has been in the training lineup for many years, with a long pass from the laser shoulder, and Brady's personal heroism was undoubtedly revealed. The other four games were all playoff-level: Cowboys, Patriots, Colts and Beal, with a combined 40-24 record.
Raw data and team data
If voters want to look at the raw data, Brady's reasons are equally strong. The first 17 weeks of 4990 yards and 40 touchdowns both led the league, with two dashes. There are people in the league who can do this in a single season, they are Dan Marino in '84, Brady in '07, Drew Brice in '11 and '12, Payton Manning in 2013 and Mahoms in '18. Everyone except Brice won the MVP of the season.
Brady also has the greatest advantage for voters who are superstitious about leading the quarterback to lead the team to get a high score. The Pirates are second only to the Cowboys in scoring this season, but the Cowboys have five defensive touchdowns and the Pirates have only two, which makes the Pirates offensive group the highest total score. In the statistics that scored more than expected, the pirates still ranked first in the pressure cowboy.
For those who are superstitious about scoring, Brady is still the perfect choice for MVP.
Brady vs Rogers
The real key to Brady's battle with Rogers MVP is timing. Rogers has indeed been quite explosive in recent times, with a PFF rating of 88.4 during that period from Week 10 onwards, higher than Brady's 83.4. However, if we look at the season as a whole, Brady's PFF rating for the first nine weeks of the season was 91.6 and Rogers was only 81.3. That's why Brady's overall season rating of 91.4 is higher than Rogers' 89.1.
One game that has the potential to change the MVP race is that Brady was kept a clean sheet by the Saints in the Sunday night game all-American live broadcast. It was Brady's worst game of the season, with a PFF rating of only 50.3, but in fact, Rogers scored 43.3 lower than Brady in the first week of the season against the same opponent Saints, and in fact, in the 15th week of the Packers' victory over the Seahawks, Rogers scored only 47.3. So when it comes to stability, Rogers is actually slightly inferior to Brady.
Back in the first week, Rodgers' poor performance made it doubtful whether he was still affected by the offseason transfer incident, while Brady reversed the East Champions Cowboy in the fourth quarter of the opener. If this game had happened in the near future rather than at the beginning of the season, perhaps the plot of the MVP competition would have been reversed. But the MVP campaign is not about the plot, but the performance of the players throughout the season, and should not be swayed by the quality of a recent game.
If you're more interested in a player's individual show, Brady has 10 games this season with a PFF rating of 75.0, while Rogers has only 9, as mentioned earlier, Brady only has one with a rating below 55.0 and Rogers has two with a rating below 50.0. Rogers had missed an entire game in the first 17 weeks, and Brady's absence in all the slots was single-handedly pushing the game into garbage time.
conclusion
From personal performance to teammate support, from basic data to advanced data, from game stability to MVP moments, Brady has an advantage, he should be the only candidate for this season's MVP and season first team, there is no doubt about it.