Manning and Peterson Both Deserve 2012 Hardware

Adrian Peterson and Peyton Manning are vying for the same hardware this year.  While both are strong candidates for each award, is clear that Manning is the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year (CPOY) and Peterson is the Most Valuable Player (MVP).

Manning sat out an entire year after he had two vertebrae in his neck fused together.  His nerves were damaged and no one, not even doctors, knew if he would ever regain the arm strength to make NFL throws, much less to be Peyton Manning again. 

Peterson on the other hand tore his ACL and MCL, which is a severe injury, but he technically only missed one game and no  one questioned whether he would be back.  The speed of Peterson’s recovery astonished experts, but it isn’t unprecedented. Wes Welker had a similar injury in Week 17 of the 2009 season and started in Week 1 of the following year. Welker went the Pro Bowl that year, but did not win CPOY.

Manning, on the other hand, was in an abyss of uncertainty.   Like former CPOY winners Chad Pennington and Willis McGehee, Manning who had multiple surgeries, multiple setbacks, entire seasons lost and moments where retirement seemed inevitable. 

The fact that Manning made it back on the field at all is a feat that could garner him CPOY consideration.  In true Manning form he not only came back but he came back and  played at an MVP level which solidifies him as the 2012 CPOY.  

Ignoring the back stories however, Peterson was more valuable to his team’s success this year and thus is the rightful 2012 MVP.  Manning joined a team that lost in the second round of the playoffs last year with Tim Tebow at the helm.  There was a strong sentiment before the season that Manning, if recovered, was the missing component to an already-talented team.  When the Broncos earned the AFC's 1 seed last week that proved to be true (at least for regular season MVP considerations).

The improved play from talented youngsters like Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker evidences Manning's large role in the Broncos' ascent.  But as far as the 2012 Broncos are concerned, it is easy to point out all the areas where the team is strong and all the things that went right.  

The opposite is true of the 2012 Vikings.  The 2012 Vikings became contenders and shattered expectations by adopting Peterson's legendary drive, refusal to quit and confidence.

Consider that the 2011 Vikings were 3-13.  Most thought the Vikings needed to rebuild. The 2012 Vikings have largely the same personnel from 2011 but have managed a 10-6 record and a playoff birth.  That happened despite many things going wrong on the field for them.  

The investment in Jerome Simpson brought no returns; Kyle Rudolph disappears for multiple games at a time; Percy Harvin missed the last seven games of the season; and Christian Ponder, the quarterback in a quarterback driven league, got worse (and sometimes way worse) before he got better.

The Harvin and Ponder situations in particular should have created insurmountable problems for fragile 3-win team.  Harvin was having a monster season and proving to be one of the most electric players on Earth before an awkward tackle ended his season in week 9. He went down and the Vikings became one-dimensional and could have folded (which it appeared Ponder did for a while). 

Ponder had three games this year where he threw for less than 100 yards.  Against Arizona, he threw for only 58 yards, whereas Peterson had five games where he exceeded that total on the ground—on one play! Professional starting quarterbacks not named Tim Tebow don't have one game with less than 100 yards let alone three.  Even Tebow never had less than 60 total yards in a game as a starter.

At a minimum, Ponder had problems and frequently hurt his team rather than helped. His averages of 6.08 yards per attempt and 183 yards per game both ranked him 31st and ahead of only Blaine Gabbert, who’s Jaguars finished 2-14. His total yards ranked 25th, touchdowns ranked 23rd. 

 

His 62.1 % completion percentage ranked him fairly high at 13th, but completing a decent percentage of six-yard passes doesn’t do much to sustain drives, put points on the board and help a team win. In fact, due to Ponder, the Vikings had the highest percentage of three-and-outs of all playoff teams expect the Bengals. And yet, the one-dimensional 2012 Vikings won continuously against strong competition

 

Peterson simply didn't let the team succumb to its seemingly per-ordained mediocrity.  Peterson has always been great, but with Harvin physically unable to perform and Ponder performing awfully, he morphed into something even bigger.  The Vikings went 5-2 after Harvin went down, including must-win games against the Bears, the Texans (the AFC’s two-seed), and the Packers (the NFC’s three-seed).  During that stretch Peterson ran for 1,140 yards and averaged 6.8 yards per carry while Ponder threw for only 1,129 yards and averaged 5.8 yards per attempt in those games. 

The 2012 Vikings, fueled by Peterson's absurd second half of the season performance and leadership, refused to let Harvin's injury, Ponder's growing pains, an inept passing game, 9-man fronts or a brutal end of the season schedule stop them.   Even when put up average numbers, like the 86 yards he gained on 25 carries against Houston in week 16, the Vikings still convincingly won that must-win game on the road.  The Vikings followed that suprise performance by getting over the post-Farve Packer hump and found themselves in the playoffs.   

Peterson is this years MVP because he had one of the greatest rushing years in the history of the NFL, he did so in a pass happy league on a one-dimensional running team AND he also transformed the personality and will of his team so that it became a contender.  With all due respect to Manning and the other worthy quarterbacks out there, Peterson made a position (rb) and a team (the Vikings) relevant at a time when both were at their weakest.  That can't be said for anyone else in the MVP discussion and that makes Peterson the rightful winner.