SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Lindsay H. Jones breaks down the biggest games of the week. USA TODAY Sports
We’re an injury or two away from Blake Bortles or Case Keenum entering the NFL’s MVP conversation.
Oh, you laugh. But at the rate marquee players are going down this season, finding someone who can be called most valuable could be a tough order. Being most durable or most good enough might have to suffice.
This is not a slight to Tom Brady or Antonio Brown, the current – and very worthy -- front-runners for MVP. But when you consider that everyone else who’s been in that spot or could make a claim to it has suffered some season-altering injury, often at the worst possible times, you can only assume that this season is cursed and there is still more doom and gloom to come over these last three weeks.
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How else to explain the Philadelphia Eagles being runaway winners of the NFC East only to lose presumptive MVP Carson Wentz to a torn ACL on Sunday afternoon? Or the Houston Texans finally appearing to turn the corner only to have Deshaun Watson tear his ACL, three weeks after J.J. Watt fractured his tibial plateau?
Aaron Rodgers’ hopes for a third MVP shattered right along with his collarbone. Andrew Luck ran out of, well, luck before the season even began.
The carnage hasn’t been limited to the NFL’s elite, either. David Johnson, Julian Edelman, Odell Beckham Jr., Carson Palmer are all sidelined. Ditto for Richard Sherman, Ryan Shazier and Dont’a Hightower.
The black cloud is so thick, it even swallowed the NFL’s most indestructible man. When Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Joe Thomas tore his left triceps Oct. 22, it ended his nearly 11-year consecutive snap streak.
Not consecutive games. Consecutive snaps. 10,363 of them, to be exact.
Perhaps we should have known this was going to be the season we couldn’t have nice things in Week 1, when Eric Berry ruptured his Achilles. Berry is the uncontested feel-good story of the NFL, returning to the field nine months after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in December 2014, earning comeback player of the year for the 2015 season.
If he can get hurt, the NFL injury gods will have spare no one.
Which brings us back to the current state of the MVP race.
Brady is a logical choice, simply because he’s Brady and is still doing Brady things at 40, an age when most quarterbacks have settled into their TV careers. But games like the one he had Monday night in Miami leave questions.
Yes, there’s bound to be a rough day or two in a 16-game season. But there are bad games and there are bad games. That was a bad game, with Brady throwing multiple interceptions for the first time this year and the Patriots going 0-for-11 on third-down conversions.
There’s a strong case to be made for Brown, who would be the first wide receiver ever to win MVP. That would be fitting, given that Brown does a lot of things no one else does.
His sideline catches have sealed victories over the Green Bay Packers and Baltimore Ravens. He had 213 yards receiving against the Ravens, giving him 627 in the last four games alone. With 1,509 yards this season, he’s got a chance to break Calvin Johnson’s single-season mark of 1,964.
But if not Brady or Brown, then who? Russell Wilson is single-handedly keeping the Seattle Seahawks afloat with his late-game heroics but he, too, has had some very ugly games this season, including a three-interception outing Sunday. Drew Brees is having a solid season, but it’s the New Orleans defense that has made the difference. Todd Gurley is running roughshod over opposing defenses, but everyone knows coach Sean McVay is the real MVP of the Los Angeles Rams.
See, the pickings are slim, and there are still three treacherous weeks to go. Instead of awarding an MVP this season, maybe it should be renamed the BPS.
Best Player Standing.
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Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.
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