What the howl? The NFL’s MVP vs Reality

By the time you read this, the world will know the winner of Super Bowl XLVI.

The media, eternal slaves to the notion that individual players are judged by their championship rings, has either crowned Tom Brady the greatest quarterback of all time or elevated Eli Manning above his brother, Peyton.

Neither proclamation will be true, but it clearly demonstrates the obsession sportswriters have with attributing the play of an entire team to one person.

After all, Aaron Rodgers single-handedly led the Packers to 15 wins this season, right? Well, one would assume so the way the media has come just short of deifying him.

Rodgers was named league MVP Saturday despite the fact that his backup, Matt Flynn, stepped in for him during a Week 17 match-up against the Lions and set franchise records for passing yards and touchdowns in a game.

If your team is so good that your offense has its best day of the year without you under center, then you are in no way the most valuable player in the NFL. You aren't even the most valuable player on your team.

But in the sports world, context is not important.

Rodgers' cartoonish numbers and 15-1 record are credited solely to him, without regard for the fact that he plays in a superb offensive system with an excellent coaching staff and perhaps the greatest receiving corps in history. He is a good quarterback playing on a great team.

Meanwhile, Brady has long been the beneficiary of a great offensive system. He consistently has one of the best offensive lines in football and a strong cast of skill players. When he gets protection and his wide receivers get open, he is good. When he gets crushed by elite defensive ends and linebackers and doesn't have time to dump the ball off to Wes Welker, he doesn't play well.

Shocking, isn't it?

When he suffered a serious knee injury in Week 1 of the 2008 season, he was replaced by Matt Cassel, who hadn't started a game since high school. The Patriots went on to win 11 games. Like Rodgers, Tom Brady is a good quarterback playing on a great team.

If championships are the only standard by which players are judged, then Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson and Jim McMahon were all better quarterbacks than Dan Marino.

Football is a team sport, and very few players are capable of elevating a mediocre team into a great one.

Peyton Manning does that, but because he has only one championship ring he will forever be seen as Brady's inferior. But when Manning went down and missed the entire 2011 season, his Colts, previously a perennial Super Bowl contender guaranteed to win at least ten games a year, came within 17 points of being winless.

Who is the most valuable player in the NFL? The answer seems obvious to me.