Your Top 5 MVP vote if you were a voter

[FireChans]

19 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

Do I have to say the facts of the game conditions out loud, or can I assume you actually know the answer and are just having fun with this?

 

 

You're the one boiling it down to one singular game, the 2021 AFCCG against the Chiefs. All I've said is that expecting Allen to consistently play at his highest level for four consecutive playoff games is not realistic, yet that is seemingly the only thing that many people on here will be satisfied with. Again I have seen multiple people on here say that his performance against the Eagles wasn't good enough because he threw one INT. And even that performance is not a realistic expectation for four consecutive playoff games.

 

Every QB is going to stumble at some point over a 4 game sample size. So when people say they don't know if Allen can be "consistent enough" to win a Super Bowl, I would like to know what kind of consistency they are expecting. If he randomly drops the ball at midfield in a playoff game that we lose, is he the reason we lost?

I'm actually boiling it to two. 

 

You say the expectation for Allen is to perform at his peak is for 4 straight games. I'm saying that in his best playoff run, he was at his peak for a maximum of 2 games, ONCE.

 

Yeah, I kinda expect better than that.

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

51 minutes ago, FireChans said:

Man, if only Allen had a defense that outscored the reigning MVP and clinched the game with a pick six when he was struggling mightily. 
 

Surely, he could have a bounce back excellent outing in the AFCCG.

Should we go back down that road? Offense played better than the defense that day in the AFCCG.  no doubt about it.

 

that may have been the defenses worst postseason performance to date and that includes the 13 second game.

 

The defense showing up in two out of about seven postseason games isn’t something to get overly excited about.

 

meanwhile, the Bengals defense has showed up in pretty much every postseason game in the Joe Burrow era. Fortunate for the Bengals as Joe Burrow has yet to have a great game in the postseason.

[FireChans]

4 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

Should we go back down that road? Offense played better than the defense that day in the AFCCG.  no doubt about it.

 

that may have been the defenses worst postseason performance to date and that includes the 13 second game.

 

The defense showing up in two out of about seven postseason games isn’t something to get overly excited about.

 

meanwhile, the Bengals defense has showed up in pretty much every postseason game in the Joe Burrow era. Fortunate for the Bengals as Joe Burrow has yet to have a great game in the postseason.

This isn’t about offense vs defense. @HappyDays thinks the expectation for Josh to have 4 straight games playing excellent is crazy.

 

 

I ultimately agree, because Josh has only had 2 excellent games back to back once ever in the postseason.

[Matt_In_NH]

This is a weird year for MVP, there is no clear frontrunner.  I know Lamar is the betting favorite today but just looking at stats I don't see it.  Sure he is on the team with the best record but if that was not true he would not be in the conversation.   I do think McCaffrey might be most deserving today and I think Allen has the best opportunity to rise if he were to crush the final two and help the Bills capture the two seed.  My opinion on Purdy is he is a JAG on 31 teams but he is with the best coach he can be with, he has good stats but is not a spectacular player.

[dollars 2 donuts]

@Wizard

 

Honestly, Wizard, I don't think your list is a bad list, at all.

 

Sure, people might disagree, but there is nothing to mock in what you have.

 

My only change, for argument sake, would be switching out Dak for Purdy.  That is not a knock on Dak, but just giving a little more credit to Purdy.  Yes, I know the skill position talent SF has, plus they have Shanny, but still.

 

I will say the Baltimore game took him right out of the picture for the top spot.  Regardless of any other candidates shortcomings "recency and primacy" still matter.

 

 

EDIT:  One more add, if Josh goes off for 4-5 this weekend (3-4 pass, 1 rush) against the Pats D, I believe he is absolutely back in the picture for the top spot.

 

If He finishes with 48 in any fashion, but preferably 30+ passing and 15+ rushing and also clinches the #2 seed.  Wow...he has a strong argument.

 

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by dollars 2 donuts

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

1 hour ago, FireChans said:

This isn’t about offense vs defense. @HappyDays thinks the expectation for Josh to have 4 straight games playing excellent is crazy.

 

 

I ultimately agree, because Josh has only had 2 excellent games back to back once ever in the postseason.

correct. Burrow hasn’t had a single excellent game in the postseason to date and yet found himself in the Super Bowl. 
 

 

[FireChans]

22 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

correct. Burrow hasn’t had a single excellent game in the postseason to date and yet found himself in the Super Bowl. 
 

 

Okay. That’s good for him.

[frostbitmic]

 

I see a number of people mentioning Purdy but IMO he isn't even the MVP on his own team.

 

Then there's Reek in Miami, he may get to 2000 yards but what about the guy getting him the ball ? ... Tua's passing numbers this year are slightly better than Josh. Tua has about 440 more passing yards, 1 fewer TD pass and 5 fewer INTs. With a couple of great games he could get to 5000 yds.

 

If the Bills win the East, Josh will be ahead of both water mammals, if they don't he doesn't stand a chance.

 

Then there's Lamar, who leads the team with the best record in the league. He is his teams best passer and runner and he's throwing to a rookie, a TE and OBJ who has been irrelevant since he was a Giant.

[mrags]

Allen. The reason- 40+ TDs and nobody else is even close. He accounts for more of his teams scores than any other player in the league by far. Without him, the Bills would be a 4-5 win team 

[Ya Digg?]

So something that should be brought up against Lamar but won’t is his accountability in the lack of weapons. It’s not like Baltimore hasn’t tried. They have used 3 first round picks on WR, multiple 2nd and 3rd rounders on playmakers, have signed several free agents and none of them pan out.  Does the “MVP” get a free pass on that? Shouldn’t voters take that into consideration when they make their vote? 

[Mikie2times]

6 hours ago, HappyDays said:

 

It is extremely rare that a QB is consistently great over several consecutive playoff games and the Super Bowl. The team has to pick up the QB at some point. Just from the last 3 Super Bowl winners:

 

2020 - Stafford partially just got lucky that a game losing INT was dropped in the NFCCG. He then threw two bad INTs in the Super Bowl. His team still won.

 

2021 - Brady threw 3 INTs in the NFCCG. And let's be honest he wasn't particularly great in that Super Bowl, his defensive line won them the game.

 

2022 - Mahomes missed time in the divisional round against the Jaguars. His backup QB led a TD drive and his defense held. Against the Bengals in the AFCCG he missed several relatively easy passes and inexplicably dropped the ball, giving the Bengals the ball for free at midfield. Again his defense held and he got the win. He only had 182 passing yards in the Super Bowl.

 

There is a pervasive belief on here that if Allen doesn't play at his absolute best for four consecutive playoff games, we will never win a Super Bowl. That is not close to realistic. Nor has it ever been the case for other Super Bowl winners. For example I have seen people here blame him for the loss against the Eagles because of his one INT. If the expectation is for Allen to play BETTER than that for four consecutive games, we can go ahead and pack it in for the season and probably just get rid of McDermott now because we will never win a Super Bowl under this regime if that performance isn't good enough.

 

I will post once and move on as I think this topic has had just about everything said that could be said in the past. 

 

About 4-5 times a year and in each of these playoff games, the offense completely forgets how to move the ball. We don't run. Josh has his completion % plummet. Sometimes we see a turnover, but the main ingredient is we can't get a first down and our rhythm is gone. That version of the offense can't show up in the playoffs. If it does, we need to learn how to manage it. We saw that version of the offense in the 2nd half against Houston. After we took the lead, we saw it for about 3 quarters in the AFC Championship at Arrowhead. Then we saw it for the entire Bengals game.

 

The floor needs to be higher than that. I'm hoping the addition of our running game can steady the tides a bit more when this is occurring.  

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

11 hours ago, FireChans said:

Defense picked up Allen and the offense vs the Ravens. Lamar and those boys got punked, no thanks the offense.

Big thanks to the weather though. Or do you think Bass and Tucker each missing two 40 yard FG’s was just a coincidence and horrid wind was not a factor? I mean this is Justin Tucker we are talking about. 

[BigDingus]

1. CMC

2. Lamar

3. Tyreek

4. Josh

5. Purdy (yes, still)

 

That's after week 16. Things could change in the next 2 weeks, but that's my current ranking.

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

10 hours ago, FireChans said:

 

 

Yeah, I kinda expect better than that.

why? We already gave you Burrow as a prime example of a guy that can get to the Super Bowl without playing a single great game. 
 

Matt Stafford who won the Super Bowl in the same year hardly had great game after game. 
 

Defenses typically over perform in the postseason. The term “defenses win championships” wasn’t created for a reason. But unfortunately the only times the Bills defense has showed up when it mattered is when the weather played a major factor on both offenses and when the offense pitched a perfect game. 

Edited December 29, 2023 by Sammy Watkins' Rib

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

5 hours ago, Mikie2times said:

 

 

About 4-5 times a year and in each of these playoff games, the offense completely forgets how to move the ball. We don't run. Josh has his completion % plummet. Sometimes we see a turnover, but the main ingredient is we can't get a first down and our rhythm is gone. That version of the offense can't show up in the playoffs. If

 

 

 

It’s actually quite normal in playoff football. QB’s get you to the playoffs. The defense that shows up often makes it to the Super Bowl. There are a lot of great QB’s in the playoffs every year. 

I can’t tell you why the Bills defense has underperformed so often. 

[FireChans]

7 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

why? We already gave you Burrow as a prime example of a guy that can get to the Super Bowl without playing a single great game. 
 

Matt Stafford who won the Super Bowl in the same year hardly had great game after game. 
 

Defenses typically over perform in the postseason. The term “defenses win championships” wasn’t created for a reason. But unfortunately the only times the Bills defense has showed up when it mattered is when the weather played a major factor on both offenses and when the offense pitched a perfect game. 

Because Josh is supposedly the best QB in football?

 

Shouldn't his standards be higher than getting carried to the Super Bowl (and losing) like Joe Burrow? 

Edited December 29, 2023 by FireChans

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

2 minutes ago, FireChans said:

Because Josh is supposedly the best QB in football?

 

Shouldn't his standards be higher than getting carried to the Super Bowl (and losing) like Joe Burrow? 

Okay. I mean most have Josh as 2 or 3. Nobody has him as 1 besides some Bills fans. 
 

And guess what most have Burrow as 2 or 3. Your math isn’t adding up. 
 

let’s say Josh is 2 and Burrow is 3. That difference of 1 spot means Josh shouldn’t get the same assistance that Burrow gets?

 

And to be honest I would say the overwhelming consensus going into this season by the media was Burrow ahead of Josh. 
 

Who knows maybe after this season if the Bills win it all and Mahomes coming off his worst year ever maybe Allen actually will move to the consensus 1 spot. 

[DrDawkinstein]

1. CMC

 

 

 

 

2a. Lamar

2b. Josh

 

3. Hill

4. I guess Dak because I have to put someone here

[FireChans]

Just now, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

Okay. I mean most have Josh as 2 or 3. Nobody has him as 1 besides some Bills fans. 
 

And guess what most have Burrow as 2 or 3. Your math isn’t adding up. 
 

let’s say Josh is 2 and Burrow is 3. That difference of 1 spot means Josh shouldn’t get the same assistance that Burrow gets?

 

And to be honest I would say the overwhelming consensus going into this season by the media was Burrow ahead of Josh. 
 

Who knows maybe after this season if the Bills win it all and Mahomes coming off his worst year ever maybe Allen actually will move to the consensus 1 spot. 

The guy I’m conversing with has Josh at #1.

 

The guy he thinks is worse, Patrick Mahomes, has had multiple streaks of great games in the postseason.

 

Again, these are all my points of contention.

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

2 minutes ago, FireChans said:

The guy I’m conversing with has Josh at #1.

 

The guy he thinks is worse, Patrick Mahomes, has had multiple streaks of great games in the postseason.

 

Again, these are all my points of contention.

Okay a Bills fan has Allen 1. 
 

not going to agree unless we are talking just the time span of the 2023 season, then yeah obviously Allen is 1. Burrow is injured and Mahomes is having a down year. 
 

What I do think is exciting is if the Bills win a Super Bowl this year we actually might start seeing the general consensus switch to Allen as 1.

 

I think the consensus today is still Mahomes 1 and then Burrow and Allen as 2 and 3 in differing order. 

[Mikie2times]

11 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

 

It’s actually quite normal in playoff football. QB’s get you to the playoffs. The defense that shows up often makes it to the Super Bowl. There are a lot of great QB’s in the playoffs every year. 

I can’t tell you why the Bills defense has underperformed so often. 

2 of the last 14 Super Bowl participants scored under 20 points in a playoff game and still made the Super Bowl. Buffalo has done it 3 times. So while I would like to agree with this, the modern game really isn't trending that way anymore. Even if it was, is our defense going to hold up in an under 20 playoff game? It has once.  Unless we really figure some things out the answer to that is no.  I also don't think anybody is celebrating Montana and Brady and more recently Mahomes for what they did in the regular season.  Your comment about QB's not being prime for key output in the playoffs is just not right. 

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

8 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

Your comment about QB's not being prime for key output in the playoffs is just not right. 

well our QB balls out in the playoffs too so that is fine. He’s not Joe Burrow in the playoffs. 

12 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

2 of the last 14 Super Bowl participants scored under 20 points in a playoff game and still made the Super Bowl. Buffalo has done it 3 times.

 

I’m guessing the Bengals have to be one of those 2 teams as well to score under 20 and make the Super Bowl. 
 

I’ll say that is surprising as that is a lot of games and would figure there would be more teams out of the 28 qualifying to have scored under 20.
 

But there is also a large difference between under 20 and 38+ Most teams I guess will give up between 20 and 27 on average which makes quite a few more games winnable. 

[Chugga]

If you go by the way I view the definition of “most valuable player” there’s no doubt in my mind that if you removed Josh Allen from the Bills we are a 2-13 team.  He is the most valuable player in the league.  The Ravens have survived without Lamar.  For as amazing as Mccaffrey and Hill are if you remove both of them their teams are still winning games.  Maybe not as many but they are winning.  At this point I don’t even know if I can ever take Burrow seriously as an MVP candidate moving forward with his replacement winning them games.  So for me as long as the Bills win out and finish in the top 2 in their conference my top 5 are….

 

1.  Allen

2.  Hill

3.  Mccaffrey

4.  Lamar

5.  Don’t care

[Mikie2times]

4 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

well our QB balls out in the playoffs too so that is fine. He’s not Joe Burrow in the playoffs. 

Nobody is in the same universe as Mahomes who is active in the playoffs

 

 

Burrow has not shown as high a ceiling as Allen, but he has kept the floor higher. Burrows 2nd worst performance in QBR is the same as Allens 4th worst performance. 

 

 

Outside Mahomes TB Super Bowl, Allen has the two lowest ratings out of all the games combined.

 

His % of playoff games under a 90 rating is 55%. Burrows is 28.5% and Mahomes is 21.4%

 

Playoffs are less about being great and more about not being awful. 

 

 

 

[Mikie2times]

21 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

well our QB balls out in the playoffs too so that is fine. He’s not Joe Burrow in the playoffs. 

 

I’m guessing the Bengals have to be one of those 2 teams as well to score under 20 and make the Super Bowl. 
 

I’ll say that is surprising as that is a lot of games and would figure there would be more teams out of the 28 qualifying to have scored under 20.
 

But there is also a large difference between under 20 and 38+ Most teams I guess will give up between 20 and 27 on average which makes quite a few more games winnable. 

It's the last 7 Super Bowls, 14 participants. We will be fine if we can get to 20+. It's been that way in the regular season for the most part as well. 

 

Yes, the Bengals scored 19. It's a real mix. The floor needs to be 20+ but certainly plenty of teams that rolled 30 the entire way. I don't see us being that sort of team.

 

I'm hopeful with how we have developed our running game that perhaps we can Bengal our way to victory in some of these games where Josh is below 80 in rating. We used to just keep passing in those games prior and was like putting us in quick sand. More we fought, the worse it got. A solid ground game gives us a foundation to win ugly as we did vs KC and the Chargers. You have to like Allen late in those ugly games. 

[The Jokeman]

1. Josh Allen

2. Christian McCaffrey

3. Ty Hill

4. Lamar Jackson

5. Dak Prescott

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

6 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

 

 

Playoffs are less about being great and more about not being awful. 

 

I disagree. 
 

Allen needed to be great against the Chiefs x2, Colts and Bengals to have any chance to win those games. An average performance  in either would not have been enough. Bills were eliminated in three out of those 4 games. Allen was great in two of them and Bills were 1-1. The other two he was poor to maybe slightly below average, but average performances would not have made a difference. He needed great performances in those two games. 
 

And didn’t you basically just say the opposite in your post prior? QB’s being prime for key output?

 

if your defense can hold a team to under 24 points I suppose the QB doesn’t need to be as great as often. 

[Mikie2times]

2 minutes ago, Sammy Watkins' Rib said:

I disagree. 
 

Allen needed to be great against the Chiefs x2, Colts and Bengals to have any chance to win those games. An average performance  in either would not have been enough. Bills were eliminated in three out of those 4 games. Allen was great in two of them and Bills were 1-1. The other two he was poor to maybe slightly below average, but average performances would not have made a difference. He needed great performances in those two games. 
 

And didn’t you basically just say the opposite in your post prior? QB’s being prime for key output?

 

if your defense can hold a team to under 24 points I suppose the QB doesn’t need to be as great as often. 

I'm not asking Allen to be great. If he has to do so, I hope he can deliver as he has at times before. Yes, I expect a generational QB to step up in the playoffs but being successful in playoffs has a lot of paths. I don't think we can win on Josh's back alone and that's not what I'm asking. I view our path with how Brady is managing the offense as being more Bengal like. Run dominant. Limit mistakes. Keep it close and trust your franchise guy to win it at the end. With that, I'm asking Allen to be consistent. Minimum 80-85 rating. Mahomes, Burrow, and Allen are 1-4 combined when they have under an 80 rating. Josh has two under 70 ratings.  That is a guaranteed exit and the formula we are trying to employ will not work if that occurs.  

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

32 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at these playoff splits again I see that Burrow is the only one of the three to have a lower post season passer rating than regular season rating.

 

So playing better or worse in the postseason over regular season expectations:

 

Mahomes reg 103.4 / post 107.4 = +4 better in post season

 

Allen reg 92.5 / post 99.6 = +7 better in postseason

 

Burrow reg 98.6 / post 93.8 = -5 worse in the postseason

 

Also, this is strictly passer rating. Allen’s bread and butter is Total QBR. I would assume the difference is even more in favor of Allen over Burrow if we looked at Total QBR.