Home Player Spotlight Antonio Brown and the MVP Race

Antonio Brown and the MVP Race

by Steeldad

A wide receiver winning the National Football League Most Valuable Player Award is as rare as Donald Trump saying something nice about women. It just doesn’t happen does it? While it’s extremely unlikely that Steelers’ wide receiver Antonio Brown wins the league’s MVP award, I have to wonder, what more does a guy have to do?

Brown has already entered rare air with back-to-back 1,500 yard receiving seasons and he’s 14 receptions away from his career high of 129 for a season. This, despite the fact he’s played four games without Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

Wondering where his numbers would be with a healthy Big Ben is likely to hurt your brain. That shouldn’t however take away the fact that Brown has put together a season that is worthy of MVP consideration.

Receivers by nature don’t win the award because they rely so heavily on the quarterback and if the WR is putting up big numbers then so too is the quarterback. For whatever reason he’s the one gets the attention and bulk of the accolades.

Those games without Roethlisberger will no doubt hurt his chances and his rather pedestrian game against Richard Sherman and the Seahawks doesn’t help either. What’s interesting about that game in Seattle is that his six receptions for 51 yards were actually pretty impressive.

I say this because let’s be honest; the attention focused on him allowed Markus Wheaton to have a career day with nine catches for 201 yards and a score. That’s the type of impact Brown can have on opposing defenses. But that also illustrates his overall work ethic too.

Every week he knows he’s going to be the major focus of defenses yet he puts up all-pro numbers and you can easily argue that his job is tougher than a quarterback’s from the aspect of putting up big numbers. He has the individual match-ups to defeat from a physical standpoint that can often be brutal.

In the end Brown will get votes but they will be tiny compared to those of Cam Newton and Tom Brady. Is that right? Is it fair? No, but MVP races rarely go without some form of controversy anyway.

Brown is as deserving of the MVP as anyone else is in my opinion especially if we truly look at what the definition of “MVP” really is.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.