Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers became only the sixth player to be named the NFL’s MVP at least three occasions, carrying the award as a runaway winner at Saturday’s NFL Honors show.
Rodgers, who accepted the Most Valuable Player award almost, received 44 of the 50 votes conducted by a nationwide panel of the media. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen received four votes, and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes got two votes.
Rodgers also won for its 2011 and 2014 seasons.
“It’s an honor to win this award for the next time,” Rodgers said in a prepared video acceptance speech. “2020 was a crazy year filled with a great deal of change, expansion, some amazing memorable moments, 180 straight days of having my nose hairs scraped, enjoying for very little lovers or no [lovers ] the full season. I have engaged, and I played with some of the best football of my career”
Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert and Washington defensive end Chase Young were honored as the NFL’s best rookies.
While guiding the Packers into a 13-3 record, Rodgers became the third player in NFL history to lead the league in passing touchdowns (48) while pitching the fewest interceptions (five), according to Elias Sports Bureau research, linking Tom Brady in 2010 and Johnny Unitas at 1958. Rodgers establish a profession with an 84.4 Total QBR, the third-highest mark in a single year since ESPN began using the metric 15 years ago.
And it all began for Rodgers with an old film clip and a single throw in training camp that signaled he was back on course.
The throw was to Marquez Valdes-Scantling on a route Rodgers known as a”read-stop,” something they had been operating on nearly all offseason as a key part of Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur’s crime that never got going in his first season at the helm, 2019.
“That, to me, gave me a lot of confidence that what I was thinking about and working on and imagining could come to fruition,” Rodgers said in December, when he first revealed one of his secrets to this season. “Now you never know when the live bullets start going how you’re going to play, but I think so far as coaching camp goes, that was a significant day for me personally. And also a lot of things changed for me as far as my equilibrium, my rhythm, my timing going ahead.”
Rodgers also made reference to this film clip in the group’s Super Bowl year 10 years ago; but it was not until after this season’s NFC Championship Game loss to the seeing Tampa Bay Buccaneers that he finally revealed what he saw.
“The key that I saw was just the rhythm in my hitch,” Rodgers said last month during an appearance on”The Pat McAfee Show.” “I was realizing the thing I was working on back then so much was that the sinking to the hitch at the top of my fall. That was one area I feel that was lacking based on my trauma and some of the adjustments I had to make fundamentally to deal with a knee and a leg which wasn’t as strong as it used to be.”
Rodgers suffered a tibial plateau fracture and a sprained MCL in his left knee in Week 1 of the 2018 year old. .
“And that’s part of the reason I really got back into squatting, was’cause I wanted to create that thing up so that I could put a ton of weight and strain into that knee and those legs, because the deeper I was sinking in my hitches, the more on time I had been throwing the ball,” he said. “And I really only saw just how much of an emphasis I had been doing that at 2010, 2009, 2011, and also what that was letting me do was that I had been throwing the ball punctually, and all the games I had been watching, my timing was really, very excellent.”
Donald received 27 votes, edging out the Pittsburgh Steelers’ T.J. Watt, who picked up 20 votes.
Henry turned at the NFL’s fifth-highest single-season racing total with 2,027 yards. He also rushed for 17 touchdowns, becoming the sixth player in NFL history to lead the league in rushing yards and touchdowns in back-to-back seasons.
Henry is only the fourth running back to acquire offensive player of the year because 2010 and the first since Todd Gurley in 2017.
Donald won defensive player of the year for the third time in four years, also taking home the award following the 2017 and 2018 seasons. He joined Lawrence Taylor and J.J. Watt since the only players to earn the honor three times because it was first presented in 1971.
Donald led all players with 54 pressures this year, according to ESPN Stats & Information research. He also led the league for the third straight season in pass rush win speed as an interior defensive lineman (24.2percent ), despite being double-teamed on 65.7percent of his pass rushes (third-highest rate in league).
Herbert and Young both were obvious winners in the newcomer voting. Herbert got 41 votes, whilst Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson was runner-up for the offensive award with nine votes. Young received 42.5 votes, also Carolina Panthers safety Jeremy Chinn was next on protection using 4.5 votes.
Herbert was the sixth overall choice in the 2020 NFL draft and threw for 4,336 yards and 31 touchdowns — a single-season rookie record — in 15 games.
“Thank you to the Chargers business, the Spanos Family, Tom Telesco and coach Anthony Lynn for taking a chance on a child from Eugene, Oregon,” Herbert said in a recorded video message. “Without them, none of that is possible. As soon as it’s an unbelievable honor just to maintain the dialogue with this award, I know that it’s not possible without my teammates.”
Young was the second overall pick in the draft and posted 7.5 sacks, four forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries, something just 2003 defensive rookie of the year Terrell Suggs had completed as a rookie over the previous 20 seasons.
“It definitely wasn’t the rookie time I anticipated, just with all the pandemic and what going on,” Young said.
Also on Saturday, Kevin Stefanski, that headed the Cleveland Browns to their first winning year since 2007, first playoff appearance since 2002 and first postseason triumph since 1994, won coach of the year.
Stefanski obtained 25 of 50 votes. Buffalo’s Sean McDermott (7) finished second, and the Miami Dolphins’ Brian Flores (6) was third.
Washington quarterback Alex Smith, who suffered a broken fibula and tibia followed by 17 surgeries because of infections that almost cost him his right leg, was named comeback player of the year.
Smith nearly swept the voting, receiving 49 votes, while Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger got one vote.
Smith went 5-1 as a starter this season to help Washington make the playoffs.
“Two decades back, I was sitting in a wheelchair stating,’Had the entire life I had known changed forever?'” Smith said in a recorded acceptance speech. “Anger, shame, self-doubt, why me? All these were feelings I had at certain points throughout my career, but this time, it wasn’t about soccer. It was bigger. It was about me becoming a father to play with my kids, a husband to go on walks with my wife and, despite my brand new constraints, me getting my life back.
“My goal was football, not because I really thought it was a fact, but because I knew that my life could be better because of it. … It required 728 days, 728 times of small victories and major drawbacks, of countless hours of physical therapy and as many sleepless nights”
