Aaron Rodgers was named the AP Most Valuable Player for the 2014-15 regular season, beating out guys like J.J. Watt and DeMarco Murray.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has been named the AP Most Valuable Player for the 2014-15 season at the NFL Honors Awards Show. The award is given annually to the player who meant the most to his team and, typically, who can be singled out as a reason that team won games over the course of the regular season.
Many felt that the award would come down to Rodgers and Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt. Many also noted that this year's award was a bit like comparing apples and oranges, given the differences between the two. Sometimes, it's clear that the offensive or defensive player is a cut above the rest, but when there's definitely one from each category, comparing the two isn't exactly easy.
Rodgers is an efficient, effective quarterback who leads his team to victory more often than not. The Packers finished second in the NFC this season and though the playoffs aren't taken into account for this award, he advanced them to the NFC Championship before they fell to the Seattle Seahawks.
Watt is a prolific defensive end who is as effective as anybody in doing the things expected of a defensive end, but then he does all this other stuff on top of that. Outside of game-sealing interceptions and things of that nature, it's often hard to pin wins specifically on one defensive player, but Watt certainly won the Texans plenty of games himself.
Still, it's not surprising to see Rodgers walk away with the award. He finished the season with a quarterback rating of 112.2, the eighth-highest rating since the merger, and completed 65.6 percent of his passes for 4,381 yards. He put up 38 touchdowns, and while none of the numbers mentioned thus far are league highs (second in passer rating, third in touchdowns and seventh in yardage), Rodgers had just five interceptions on the season.
That touchdown-to-interception ratio is insane. His arm accounted for 228 points in touchdowns, not counting extra points, and led to no more than 35 points for the opposing team, counting extra points. He didn't throw a single interception at home, and took the Packers into the playoffs as the second seed in the NFC, narrowly losing out for the first seed to the aforementioned Seahawks.
Many will argue that it's an offensive-minded award, and they're right. Defensive players can win it when any one quarterback doesn't stand out, but Rodgers certainly did and that's why he's going home with the hardware.
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