Sabtu, 06 Februari 2021

2020 NFL awards predictions: Aaron Rodgers captures third MVP - Sportsnet.ca

Ahead of Super Bowl LV between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the NFL's 2020 season awards will be handed out on Saturday night.

From MVP to coach of the year and everything in between, here are our predictions for this year's honours.

MVP

Our pick: Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay Packers

Other contenders: Patrick Mahomes, QB, Kansas City Chiefs; Josh Allen, QB, Buffalo Bills.

An argument could be made for all three of Rodgers, Mahomes and Allen, but the Packers quarterback set himself above the rest in our minds with the efficiency and consistency with which he led the NFL’s top offence all season long.

Already a two-time MVP (2011 and 2014), Rodgers put together arguably the best campaign of his career at the age of 37 after an off-season that saw the team draft his potential successor in the first round and put his future at Lambeau in question.

Unfortunately, Rodgers’ stellar regular season was followed by another playoffs of disappointment, but there’s no doubt in our mind No. 12 was 2020's most valuable player.

Offensive Player of the Year

Our pick: Derrick Henry, RB, Tennessee Titans

Other contenders: Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay Packers; Patrick Mahomes, QB, Kansas City Chiefs; Josh Allen, QB, Buffalo Bills; Travis Kelce, TE, Kansas City Chiefs.

Offensive player of the year is always a strange award to hand out because the MVP is almost always an offensive player, so it probably should just be the MVP, right… ?

But we’re going to go in a different direction here and give props to just the eighth player in NFL history to surpass the 2,000-yard rushing mark in a season.

While many wondered whether we’d see a regression out of Henry and the Titans offence after last season’s Cinderella run in the post-season, we saw very much the opposite out of the powerful back. Henry carried the ball nearly 400 times in 2020, racked up 17 touchdowns, averaged 126.7 rush yards per game (24 more per game than his league-leading average in 2019), and surpassed the 200-yard mark in a game three times.

Henry is the best running back in the game and 2020 solidified him as one of the NFL’s best players.

Defensive Player of the Year

Our pick: Aaron Donald, DT, Los Angeles Rams

Other contenders: T.J. Watt, OLB, Pittsburgh Steelers; Xavien Howard, CB, Miami Dolphins.

It’s entirely possible that the award is given to Watt on Saturday night, and we’d be hard-pressed to find reasons why the dominant Steelers standout doesn’t deserve it.

But it's difficult for us to ignore the most dominant defender in the game, Aaron Donald, who continues to play at an uber-elite level season after season, so we're picking the Rams All-Pro to capture his fourth defensive player of the year.

Donald stands alongside Mahomes as the best players in all of football. Not only does the 29-year-old show up on the stat sheet like few other defensive tackles in the NFL do – he had 13.5 sacks in 2020, tied for second-most – but the impact he makes by just being on the field is immense. He improves everyone around him and is a game-wrecker in the truest sense of the word.

If you want an example of Donald’s impact, just look at the difference in the way the Rams defence played against the Packers in the divisional round when he was injured – they were almost a completely different unit.

Watt was an elite defender on one of the league’s top-ranked defence in 2020, but Donald was the best defender on the top-ranked defence in 2020. If that doesn’t warrant a defensive player of the year nod, we don’t know what does.

Offensive Rookie of the Year

Our pick: Justin Herbert, QB, Los Angeles Chargers

Other contenders: Justin Jefferson, WR, Minnesota Vikings.

This may be the most tightly contested award of the bunch.

Herbert was among the best quarterbacks in the NFL, let alone rookies, after taking over under centre for the Chargers in Week 2 following a freak injury to starter Tyrod Taylor. The No. 6 pick in last year’s draft ranked in or near the top-10 in all major statistical categories for quarterbacks, and he set a new mark for touchdown throws by a first-year signal-caller.

So Herbert is a no-brainer for the award, right? Not exactly.

Another first-year Justin made waves this season as Justin Jefferson, the Vikings’ first-round wide receiver to replace Stefon Diggs, not only broke rookie records in Minnesota set by Hall of Famer Randy Moss but set the mark for most receiving yards by a freshman when he reached 1,400 in Week 17.

Herbert wins the Battle of the Justins here as being a quarterback breaks the tie, but Jefferson sure gave him a run for his money.

Defensive Rookie of the Year

Our pick: Chase Young, DE, Washington Football Team

Other contenders: Jeremy Chinn, S, Carolina Panthers

While offensive rookie of the year is among the tightest of these awards races, the defensive equivalent is not.

Panthers safety Jeremy Chinn did his best to stay in the conversation, but this award belongs to the No. 2 pick in last spring’s draft.

Young got the season off to a great start with 2.5 sacks in his first two games before slumping a bit between Weeks 3 and 11 when he got to opposing quarterbacks just once. But the former Ohio State standout finished the season strong: four sacks, five tackles for loss, eight QB hits, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery over his final six games.

If we’re being honest, though, Young might as well have been scooping up this award and running it to the house in Week 14 when he recovered a fumble from 49ers quarterback Nick Mullens and rumbled into the end zone for six.

It will not only be the crowning play of Young’s fine rookie season, but likely clinched this award for the defensive star in the making.

Comeback Player of the Year

Our pick: Alex Smith, QB, Washington Football Team

Other contenders: None

In what was a gruelling year for many across the globe, Alex Smith’s return to football was one of the more encouraging stories in sports.

Nearly two years after suffering a devastating leg injury – one that required 17 surgeries and was at one point deemed life-threatening – Smith returned to the field in Week 5 against all the odds.

But it wasn’t just his unlikely return to football that makes Smith the only true contender for this year’s comeback player of the year award – Smith’s impact on his team was undeniable. The 36-year-old won each of his last five starts in 2020, including a Week 17 victory that clinched an NFC East title and a playoff spot for Washington.

Unfortunately, a calf injury held Smith out of Washington’s wild-card loss to the Buccaneers but the Football Team never would’ve been there without the heroics of No. 11.

Coach of the Year

Our pick: Sean McDermott, Buffalo Bills

Other contenders: Kevin Stefanski, Cleveland Browns; Brian Flores, Miami Dolphins.

Like most years, there are a handful of legitimate contenders in this category and all deserve a ton of credit for the jobs done with their respective teams.

For us, though, McDermott is the winner. The Bills have consistently made strides year after year under the tutelage of McDermott, culminating in the franchise’s best season in nearly 30 years in 2020. The Bills boasted a top-two offence led by a dramatically improved Josh Allen at quarterback, won their first division title since 1995 and earned a victory in a home playoff game for the first time since 1994.

Buffalo has gone from a perennial loser to a top team in the AFC thanks largely in part to the excellent roster building of GM Brandon Beane, but it doesn’t all come together without McDermott bringing the team together on the field.

And for that, McDermott has earned the honour of coach of the year.

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2021-02-06 17:04:00Z
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