One Informal Poll Makes Aaron Rodgers Look Like NFL's Clear-Cut MVP Over Tom Brady
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Last week, one voter for the AP NFL awards let it slip on a radio interview that he does not care much for Aaron Rodgers as a human being. The voter referred to Rodgers as a jerk and said that the quarterback's character essentially disqualifies him from being the league's most valuable player.
It was an ... interesting take. And it wasn't very well received -- not by fans, not by media members, and not by Rodgers himself.
"His problem is I'm not vaccinated," Rodgers said. "So if he wants to go on a crusade, and collude and come up with an extra letter to put on the award just for this season and make it the Most Valuable Vaccinated Player, then he should do that. But he's a bum."
Rodgers seemed a bit bothered to potentially lose out on the MVP award based on this assessment of his personality by a stranger. Fortunately for the Packers quarterback, a test vote organized by Peter King shows that he doesn't have much to worry about.
In his weekly column which ran on Monday morning, King -- who actually does vote for the awards -- decided to round up 36 people to run a test vote for the MVP award.
These 36 people are media members and former players who now work in the media. And of the 36 votes, Rodgers received 32 of them.
It was a blowout. (And it was reminiscent of last year's actual voting results, when Rodgers received 88 percent of the 50 votes that were cast. The difference this year is that Rodgers doesn't lead the league in passing yards or touchdowns, but he does lead in passer rating and interception percentage.)
King said Tom Brady received two votes, while Joe Burrow received two as well. Outside of that, it was all Rodgers.
Only Carl Banks (a former linebacker for Bill Belichick with the Giants) and Pro Football Focus' Steve Palazzolo cast their theoretical votes for Brady.
Two distinctions on this result: The votes were made "late in the week," so they were cast before Week 18's games. Brady added a sterling 326-yard, three-touchdown, zero-interception game to his remarkable age 44 season. Rodgers tossed a couple of touchdowns and threw for 138 yards while playing half of Green Bay's meaningless game in Detroit. And Burrow didn't make the trip with the Bengals to Cleveland.
Also, the voters aren't actual AP voters. So it's not necessarily indicative of how the final vote will turn out.
At the same time, with a broad sampling of media members and former players, the overwhelming level to which Rodgers impressed the group likely indicates that Rodgers will be taking home MVP trophy No. 4 of his career and second in as many years.
(With the playoffs set to begin this weekend, it's also a good time to remember that the MVP Award is unquestionably cursed. The winner of the award hasn't won a Super Bowl since 1999, with the winner actually playing in and losing the Super Bowl nine times since then. Brady, who won the award before losing the Super Bowl in 2007 and 2017, and who also won the award before going one-and-done in the 2010 playoffs, might be happy with this poll's result.)