The Lone MVP Vote For Justin Herbert Doesn't Matter

Yesterday night a firestorm erupted after Matt Stafford narrowly won MVP over Drake Maye and seemingly all the vitriol was directed towards one person: My beautiful prince Justin Herbert. The reason being that one first place vote, coming from PFF's Sam Monson, went to Herbert instead of either Maye or Stafford. 

All this anger towards Herbert is pointless for a simple reason. Sam's second place vote was for Stafford. The loss was there regardless. On top of that, two other voters, who are as of yet too cowardly to expose themselves, gave first place votes to Josh Allen. But, for some reason, those voters are getting almost no heat over it. 

I respect Sam. Not only for putting his name out there but for standing up for what he believes MVP should be vs what it is. I actually blogged about this at the end of last year: 

The reality is that "NFL MVP" actually means "Which QB from a top-4 team had the best stats". That's the way it is and why, in my opinion, Maye should have so obviously been the winner. Fuck "the schedule", circumstances, quality of wins or whatever. He had an insane statistical season and his team was the 2 seed. Stafford had mostly worse stats and was on a 5-seed. To quote a large Italian friend of mine, "And that's that". 

Obviously, the voters felt it was Stafford's "turn". As for the Herbert vote, it's at least a stand for what the MVP should be: The Most Valuable Player. By that definition, you could give it to somebody other than Herbert with ease and I wouldn't blame you (my arguments for Herbert can be seen in the blog above).

I feel that, if you are a Patriots fan, your anger should be solidly directed on the following: 

1. The two first place voters for Josh Allen, your rival. While everyone wants to bitch and moan about the Patriots 32nd ranked strength of schedule, the Bills played the 30th ranked schedule. While Maye had patchwork O-line and meh RB support, Allen had one of the best lines in the league and indisputably the best RB. On top of that, The Bills were one of only 7 teams with a 3-game home stretch (the Patriots were one of only 6 teams with a 3-game AWAY stretch). They only left the Eastern Timezone TWICE the entire season. With all that working for Allen (cry me a river about weapons vs patriots roster), Maye still clearly outplayed him. Bitch about the vote for Herbert all you want, but that was at least a stand for something. 

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2. The Voters who made it clear they were going Stafford no matter how badly their arguments were dismantled (Orlovsky). Plenty of media heads out there that had their fingers in their ears while voting for a guy they like who they felt was due.

3. Tom Brady. Man, call it impartiality or whatever. But when the greatest player not only in Patriots franchise history, but IN NFL HISTORY, backs the other horse, that means something to the voters! This man has been betraying you at every turn over the last month and that would piss me off if I was a fan!