Named in honor of Automatic Otto Graham, the Automatic Award goes to the most valuable player in the league each season. Given the value of passing for most of NFL (and AFL and AAFC) history, this award will almost always go to a quarterback. He touches the live ball more than any other player, has by far the largest impact on the outcome of his team’s success, and mans arguably the most important position in team sports.1 By and large, I am going to give…
With its name taken from Lawrence Taylor‘s college appellation, the Godzilla Award is bestowed annually upon the top defensive player in the league. Stats are relevant, of course, but they require context. For example, in 2006 Shawne Merriman led the league with 17 sacks. He did that while playing for Wade Phillips and getting a ton of relatively easy paths to the quarterback. Jason Taylor had only 13.5 sacks, but he did it primarily by beating his blocker and padding his box score on his own…
Named after the most well-rounded offensive weapon in history, Walter Payton, the Sweetness Award is presented to the top offensive player in the league each year. The the chagrin of some, this is going to focus pretty heavily on statistical production, which often limits the chances of the big fellas up front from getting their deserved recognition. Sweetness Awards from 1920 to 1931 rely on spotty records and a mountain of hagiography. We can’t know for sure if Benny Friedman really led the league with…
Called such in honor of perhaps the greatest football player of all time, Jerry Rice, the World Award is reserved for the most outstanding player in the league each season. Don’t confuse this with the most valuable player award, which is almost always a quarterback. This award is for the best player, without respect to position. The award is a difficult one to bestow, because it means I am counting all positions as equal and trying to determine who played his position better than other…
Named in honor of San Francisco 49ers offensive innovator and organizational mastermind Bill Walsh, the Genius Award goes to the top head coach every season. For many publications, the coach of the year award doesn’t seem to have any concrete set of criteria. The qualifications are often nebulous and internally inconsistent, and far too much credit is given for simple reversion to the mean. Oftentimes, the media and public at large establish a set of expectations for a team, assume those expectations were correct, and…
Named in honor of Mel Gray and Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, the Gray and White Award goes to the top return man in the league each season. I do not separate punt return and kick return contributions, so I occasionally have to choose between the best kickoff returner and the best punt returner. Often, players will be so good at their jobs that they make the choice easy. Other times, there will be two players who are good at one or the other, but I…
The TD Award is named in honor of 49ers great Tommy Davis and goes to the top punter in the league each season. People have vastly different opinions on what makes a great punter. Historically, people would just look at gross punting average and call it a day. It became popular to say Sammy Baugh was the great of all time, ignoring the fact that he frequently punted on third down to a defense with no returner to stop the ball from rolling and augmenting…
Named in honor of Lou “the Toe” Groza, the Toe Award is reserved for the league’s most outstanding kicker each year. This is the award for which I think heavy use of statistic is most critical for building the foundation of your rankings. Obviously you can’t just look at field goal percentage and call it a day, as not all kicks have equal difficulty. With available statistics and through use of game footage, I have been able to do a decent job identifying the degree…
Named in honor of the first great pure safety, Emlen Tunnell, the Tunnell Vision Award goes to the league’s most outstanding safety each season. The caveat here, of course, is that defensive back play can be quite inconsistent from year to year, and player’s with a higher baseline level of ability will often not have better seasons than players with a lower “true” talent level who happen to experience positive variance for a season. There are also different types of safeties: primarily, I’m referring to…
Named in honor of Deion Sanders, the greatest cover man of all time, even when he wasn’t fully invested in football, the Prime Time Award goes to the top cornerback in the league each season. The position is a highly volatile one, and you can see evidence of that in how few players won the award multiple times, and the fact that no one won it more than four times. When handing out awards for cornerbacks, there is much subjectivity, and value is in the…
