NFL Awards Races With Ben Solak!

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1:34Welcome to the Ringer NFL Show. I'm Shiel Kapadia. Today, we are talking awards races. I'm focused on the close ones. MVP, coach of the year, and offensive player of the year. Where do we stand with those three with five weeks left? Guess who we're talking to about it? our old friend Ben Solak, now with ESPN. He returns. We agree a little bit. We disagree a little bit. We keep it civil. We didn't go too crazy shouting at each other, but always fun talking football with Solak. Let's take a break. We'll come back and we talk awards races. This episode of the Ringer NFL show is presented by State Farm.

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2:50All right, we are back here with Ben Solak. So before we get started on the awards, do you need a second to comment on Ben Johnson's lack of chest hair? Or was that off the record? You're texting me. That was off the record when I texted you about the fact that some people just don't have chest hair. And we don't need to have full conversations about some people not having enough chest hair. It's just a thing that some people do and have, some people don't have. That's all. And it doesn't make you any less of a man, I believe. Not to quote you. There are many things that I claim doesn't make you less than a man.

3:16They accumulate over time. And it's a worrying volume. All right. Had to get started with that. Let's talk MVP first. So like, so it's mostly a two man race. If you look at the fan dual odds, it doesn't mean it's going to stay that way, but we want to talk about these and kind of, uh, two lanes here. Number one, who is your guy right now? Like the MVP through 13 weeks of the season. And again, the odds would say Drake Bay and Matthew Stafford are the favorite. So let's start there. And then we'll talk about, Hey, maybe if this thing changes over the next five weeks, who we're looking at. So do you have may Stafford or someone else right now.

3:48I have May over Stafford. I've had May over Stafford pretty much the whole time. There was a moment there where Stafford became a small favorite. I lean May because of the fundamental nature of most valuable player. That's kind of always the thing that I end up talking about in this time of year. There's some people who go about it with stats. We know it's often a team that wins the number one seed and so on and so forth. To me, I just want to watch and experience you as a player and think to myself, man, if I replaced you with a league average player, like no shot, right? If you took Drake May out of the Patriots offense with like the rotating cast of good enough wide receiver twos that they have with an offensive line that is, you know, much improved from last year, but I would still say was a below average line even before the injuries, which we obviously saw this past week with like the running back rotation, you know, Josh McAllen is doing a fine job as the OC, but this is no like, you know, Clint Kubiak, Ben Johnson, let's hire him tomorrow to be a head coach sort of a guy.

4:38Like May is just, he's the straw that stirs the drink. He's the keystone of the arch. He's the reason the Patriots are as successful an offense as they are. Stafford, an unbelievable season without question. And to do it at his age with a back injury is a testament to his toughness and his talent. But I know that I could get a league average quarterback into the Rams offense and Pupin Kua could carry games, Devontae Adams could carry games, that line carry games, and McVay could carry games in a way that wouldn't happen in New England. This is boring. We're on the same page. We like to argue with each other.

5:07But yeah, for this one, we're on the same page with Drake May. Yeah, I'm with you. just because I think the situation is worse than Matthew Stafford's situation. Like you mentioned, you know, he's in a good situation. He's playing awesome. He's played awesome. But he does have Puka Nakua, Devontae Adams, Sean McVay. Drake May does not have any of those things. And statistically, he's better. I don't need to go through all the nerd stats, but he is better statistically in all those areas. He's better in the traditional stats as well. So yeah, I've got May over Stafford right now. And I was actually thinking, Solak, how many quarterbacks would the Patriots trade Drake May for right now this second it's the Mahomes, Allen, Lamar, Triumvirate right that you put Barilla up there it's all three of us it's that group and then you introduce May and you say okay rookie contract can he be one of those guys and it's like yeah he absolutely can Mina said this on ESPN this week which is very accurate he's already in that rarefied air of guys you just can't do X against him right like okay you can't blitz him you also can't drop into zone against him okay you can't you can't mush rush him outside of the pocket okay you can't man and press right he's gonna kill you down like there's just no like one thing that's an answer to the guy um so no like i i i think it would be a conversation for like every single quarterback in the league now that that now that top echelon guys all off the rookie contracts yeah may may is like may is without question the most valuable player in football from like the contract perspective like what is he being paid relative to what he's giving you on the field?

6:36Without question, number one, in that cap-oriented look at most valuable player. I think Mahomes and Allen, you would just, this is all obviously, this is not real life, but I think Mahomes and Allen you would do just because you're saying, all right, it is a small sample. We know we're getting a top five offense with those two guys making that deal. I think everybody else is a conversation. I mean, if I were the Patriots, and like you said, with the salaries and maybe some of the injury stuff with Lamar in the past and the fact that he's going to be, what, 29 years old versus the age Drake May is.

7:08I mean, Joe Burrow, all these guys, I would be like, no, I think I'm just going to stick with Drake May on the rookie contract and take my chances. A word on Stafford and on May as well. It is, I think, the case this year that both May and Stafford's campaigns for MVP are not as strong as the difficult campaigns, right? Like they aren't as strong as like Lamar's MVP seasons have recently been, Allen's last year, Mahomes's, right? We've been used to a certain caliber of quarterback season being MVP. I think Stafford and May both are cut below that, but it's the hand we've been dealt. Like these are the guys that we've got to talk about.

7:40So I see some people being like, May could never be MVP. Look at how his, you know, performance compares to Josh Allen's last year. That was last year. It didn't happen this year. Allen, Mahomes, and Lamar, not one of the three is having like a, you know, thermonuclear change the game season. So these are the guys we've got. You can't not give a guy an MVP because it happens to be a down year on the award, whether it is Stafford or May. And still, I mean, 70 % completions. He's going to average almost nine yards per attempt. He's first in total EPA. He's second in EPA per pass play. So it's not, yeah, it's not a weak resume, but I am with you.

8:09The others, it felt like, oh my gosh, we're seeing something like crazy right now. We've just been on a run like that. So let's say we revisit this conversation in five weeks. Is there a guy that you would look at and say, this guy could sneak his way into that conversation depending on how the rest of the season goes? Yeah, I bet Dak's win MVP before the Chiefs game. And I think that Prescott winning the MVP is a, is a serious thing to consider. The Cowboys are plus two 40 to make the playoffs. Dak is right now 14 to one to an MVP. There are very few worlds in which the Cowboys actually make a, make a run and get to the post season in which I think Prescott doesn't win the MVP award.

8:45Right. If you look at like, really, but it always, it's always, it's always like the one or the two seed. So you're saying this would really be an exception type of year. Cause they're not going to be the one. That's why I brought up the weak class. Right. Because I do think like, Like, the Patriots just finished a 10-game winning streak. They are 11-2. They are the unquestioned top seed in the AFC. And May right now is like minus 120 to win the MVP, right? If his name were Josh Allen, minus 500, right? Like, the market does not want to run to Drake May as MVP. It's leaving the door open. And if we use the market as an adequate reflection of where voters' minds will be, which I think is fair in cases like these awards, they're leaving the back door open, like voters are, for Dak Prescott to finish the season on a 6-0 run.

9:28We know that like the Cowboys defense is certainly improving, but it's very unlikely the Cowboys win the bulk of these games on the back of like defense and ball control. No, it's going to come with gaudy stats for Dak Prescott. It's going to come with touchdown passes. They're one of the highest pass rate over expectation teams when they get inside the 30-yard line. So he's going to accumulate the stats. Like to me, like Dak is a very clear third dark horse where it's, it's not that I think he's, he's going to actually get it done. I think the Patriots are going to end up like, you know, 15 and two.

9:55So I think Mays can have a great finish to the season. But in the worlds in which the Cowboys make the playoffs, again, plus 240, that plus 1 ,400 odds is very, very short. You should be betting on that. All right. There is a narrative. There will be a statistical case. I think he absolutely, you know, if we're just saying individual performance this year, I think he belongs in the conversation. It just usually that would be against the norm, which is the total number of wins they're going to have. The only other names I'll throw in there, if the Bills were to win out, Salt-Lac. They're plus 500 to win the AFC East.

10:25They have a 24 % chance to win the one seed per the athletics playoff simulator. I think there could be a case for Josh Allen. Now, it's a tricky one because I don't think this has been his best year, but if they go on a tear and he looks, you know, you're like, whoa, this is the best version of Josh Allen over the next five weeks. He's going to have all the counting stats. He's going to have all the nerd stats. He's going to have the whole like, hey, if we look back in 10 years and are like, are we going to like regret not having Josh Allen as the MVP. I think there's that type of case. I'm with you.

10:56I don't think it's going to happen. I think the Patriots are going to hold on there. But he was one other name I wrote down at least. It's really hard to repeat, right? And we saw that literally with having Lamar and Josh Allen last year where it's like, okay, do we give the guy a second MVP for having a second really, really good season? Or do we give it to the new guy for having this newly great season, right? Like, it's very hard to compare Allen to May because if Allen's in the conversation, they almost certainly beat the Patriots. I want to say it's week 17 when they play again. It might be 16.

11:21And so that I think is a little bit of a hard comparison, but let's say it's Allen and Stafford because they do beat the Patriots. I think the voters are going to want to give it to Stafford as the guy to recognize the career achievement. Let's give him his first MVP much the way they did to Allen over Lamar last season. This guy deserves to have at least one up there on his shelf. And so it's hard for me to get there on Josh just because he's a repeat guy. But yeah, it's that one. And then like, yeah, talking about unseating your divisional rivals to win the conference. Like Jordan Love deserves probably, I'm sure.

11:53I agree. He's the last one. The thing with both the Bills and the Packers that also gives me pause is both of them just like growing the football a little too much, right? Like there's some worlds, like I said, where with the Cowboys, Prescott's put up numbers because of the way they play. There's worlds like the Bills winning their last four games, you know, running the football 62 % of the time the way they did against the Steelers. I think the Packers are in a similar boat where they're obviously passing a little bit more, but still like they're just so run heavy. There's going to be games where those guys don't accumulate the stats they need.

12:18Yeah, I agree with that. but they would have to accumulate those numbers. They would have to win the division, maybe be the one or two seed. I don't think it's going to happen, but I do think Love deserves a mention. You really don't like Bo Nix at 100-1? It's right there. No, I don't have that. Speaking of which, let's move on to coach of the year. So, Lech, maybe give the Broncos a little bit of love in this spot. I don't know. Who is your coach of the year through 13 weeks? I actually have six names written down as my finalists. So you want them now or you want to give me your pick and then I'll tell you.

12:50If you gave me a ballot, the top hit for me would be Mike McDonald, who's the coach of the Seahawks. Right now, I would still be willing to give it to him over Ben Johnson, who's the coach of the Bears. I'm not there on Brable as coach of the year. I understand why it feels that way. The Patriots were a mess last year, situationally, execution-wise. Brable walks in. They're now no longer a mess. They have unbelievable execution. That Giants game, man, what a testament to coaching. I was positive that was a trap game for the Patriots. sleepy two-win giant team. Like, they have a week 14 by, then playing for 13 games straight.

13:22This is like a classic, come out a little bit dead in a primetime game. All of a sudden, we're down 13 to three. We have to, like, inch our way back into the stupid Giants game. They came out there just hitting people. They loved playing football that night, right? That is all of Rabel. So he deserves flowers for that. He absolutely does. But I think the ineptitude of the 2024 Patriots has been greatly exaggerated to create the myth of the 2025 Rabel effect. Like, without question, they were losing ball games. Coaching was a big part of that, you know, bad end of game end of half decision, so on and so forth.

13:52But like may look great last year for like the last 13 weeks of the season. Right. We, we can't like pretend that that didn't happen. I, I struggle with how much credit Rabel's getting for me. I think that a lot of that is backwards. And so to me, it's, it's McDonald and Ben Johnson, the conversation. I lean McDonald. Uh, it's, he's a second year coach versus a first year coach as often goes to first year coaches. But what McDonald did in terms of the office coordinator change, right. Moving on from Grubb quickly, admitting the mistake, getting a guy in Klink Kubiak who matches very nicely with Sam Darnold.

14:20Managing new offensive coordinator into new quarterback is a thing that is very, very difficult to do and be very successful that fast. They did that. Think about the personnel moves that were clearly McDonald-influenced. The addition of DeMarcus Lawrence on the defensive line has just simply been one of the best defensive linemen in football, a preposterous amount. The Nick Amar and Wari trade-up and the role that he's played in that defense now that he's gotten healthy. There was such a clear vision on that side of the ball that he's executed. And then they are stone cold nails perfect in terms of like game management, fourth down management, red zone management, right?

14:52They are, McDonald's is a wonderful job in game. And if you listen to the way he like talks, he's had these press conferences and whatever about how they think about things week over week. And like, you know, he was getting all the questions, oh, matching personnel, like 13 personnel. Like McDonald is as sharp as they come in terms of like week to week game planning, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday work, preparing his guys. You see that out there in the play. I think that McDonald deserves the biggest slice-of-pie credit for Seattle's really, really quite surprising success. I think the game management stuff, he understands really well.

15:24There are times where you can just tell he's like, I'm not letting Sam Darnold lose this game for me. I love my defense, which maybe you don't hold that against him. Yes, I'm saying that to his credit. Yeah, maybe he knows his team. All right, you could. I mean, now if it gets to a better team and some bigger... I do think we could be having a conversation in a big spot in December or January, we're going, all right, I know he loves this defense, but man, you know, that was very conservative right there. But maybe not. Maybe we'll say, all right, this is kind of a different way to look at it. He knows his team.

15:54So I get that one. I wrote down Ben Johnson initially, but then I thought, I feel like I'm having some recency bias here. And just if we're going through 13 weeks, the entire body of work, I think I still go Shane Steichen. Yeah. He was like, he was the clear coach of the year in September, right? Yeah, well, October 2, probably. Yeah, I would say, because if we're zooming out, and if I would have said at the beginning of the season, hey, these two scenarios, one, the Bears are going to be atop the AFC North, and Ben Johnson's going to have coached a top 10 offense, or Shane Steichen with Daniel Jones will have a top three offense by every metric in the NFL, we all would have said the Ben Johnson thing is way more likely.

16:36I can't just say, I know they've struggled lately, and I think I'll change my mind probably in five weeks with the way this Colts thing is going and could potentially go. But if I'm saying right now at this moment in time and I had to vote, I think I would still give it to Steichen. Right, I treated this after the Bears beat the Eagles, but I was like, listen, I was positive to start the year that Shane Steichen was the coach of the year until I became positive that Mike McDonald was the coach of the year. And I'm now currently becoming positive that Ben Johnson is the coach of the year, right?

17:02For as much as MVP candidates are below average, the coach of the year candidates this year are like, it is a very, very tight race, right? Raybo is like the market leader right now. You and I haven't really talked about him. Every 49ers fan in the world is trying to convince me Kyle Shanahan's coach of the year. And I'm like, guys, I get it. I'm with you. He's on my list. He deserves to have won one by now. The coaching time he's done this year is incredible. It's just this award doesn't tend to go to like nine-year head coaches or whatever he is at this point. So it's brutally close. Steichen, and it's hard because I don't know the extent to which Daniel Jones is hurt and how some of that is going.

17:36Steichen, he had this issue with Richardson. and I was having this issue with Jones, when the helicopter starts spinning, he is not good at pulling that ship back to right. Like that is my one thing with Shane that drives me nuts. This Texans game was another example. They walked out, they were down one touchdown in the third quarter and they walked out, drop back, drop back, drop back, drop back, drop back. Buddy, like it's not that urgent yet. Like you can get back to running the football. You can stay in your base, right? They would go for like these crazy fourth downs, right? They have to drive against the Chargers.

18:04They went for like three, four downs on one drive. They got to that Chiefs game and they turtled real quick. Like it, when things start to go a little bit wrong, Steichen in my experience can like, like the pendulum could swing really far the other direction and he can vacillate and like the tailspin gets worse. That's my hesitation with Shane. If he can pull the helicopter out of the tailspin here and like land the plane on, okay, we still win the AFC North. We were kind of hoping for the one seed, whatever, we're going to be the two seed. I'm 100 % there. It's just, I know Steichen is not good at stopping the spiral.

18:34Yeah, I think that's a good point. I don't think I'm going to have it after week 18. That's why I'm doing the two exercises after week 13 and then projecting. I think the only other guys we didn't. So yeah, other guys on my list. I did have Peyton on there. I think if you dethrone the Chiefs and have a chance to be the one seed in the AFC and your quarterback is not like an elite guy, then you absolutely deserve a mention, even if it's the defense doing a lot of the lifting. And I think McVay deserves a mention as well. Like it's sort of the Shanahan thing. You know, I had Shanahan on my list as well, where just because these guys have gotten credit maybe in the past as great coaches doesn't mean they shouldn't be mentioned as the best coaching jobs this year.

19:12I'll tell you somebody who's not going to win it and is not going to get any votes at all. Well, I'm excited. But if I were putting a ballot out with like five names, ranked choice, wherever it is they do it, I would like want to make sure he was fifth on my ballot to make a point. And that's Dave Canales, the coach of the Panthers. The Packers and the Rams upsets are both remarkable examples of excellent in-game coaching. The way that they manage those scripts, So they shortened the clock and shortened the fields and kept it within one score and let the high leverage plays work for themselves.

19:40I also know he's not going to get it because like, people are going to make all the narrative, like is Bryce young getting better? Is pricing improving? Is he ready? I see a guy who is like top shelf and coaching around his quarterback. He's maximizing his talent. I agree with that. There are games like the games against the 49ers where it just like, it feels like they're all wrong. And like, you know, why when you run the football more and whatever, because they walk out with some of these really polarized game plans to me because he's working around what he's got there, the quarterback position.

20:05Canales, in terms of the peak moments, which I've been most impressed with coaching this year, Canales has two or three of them, especially those upsets. So to me, he's not going to win it. They're not going to win enough games. And the Panthers are going to be about something else. But he has really impressed me this season. I like that. It's hard to be like, oh, another coach would have that Panthers team with a better record right now. I mean, that's just another way. They are as sharp as they come there, man. I really believe that. All right, let's take a break. We come back. We will finish with Offensive Player of the Year.

21:01They say you can tell a lot about a person by the contents of their freezer. So, what does a bottle of Jägermeister say? It says you have standards. You don't cut corners. And you like your Jägermeister shots the way they're meant to be enjoyed. Ice cold. As for the frozen taquitos and mystery leftovers, we'll keep that between us. Drink it cold, or don't drink it at all. Jägermeister. Damn, that's cold. Drink responsibly. Jägermeister liqueur, 35 % alcohol by volume. Imported by Masked Jägermeister, U.S. White Plains, New York. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show. Offensive player of the year right now, Jackson Smith and Jigba is the favorite.

21:39Jonathan Taylor also has minus odds, according to FanDuel. There are other guys you could potentially make a case for. Solak, who do you got? This is a really, really challenging... If you made me vote today, I don't know if I would take Taylor or JSN. It's really quite hard. You kind of want to see them get to the end of the year, be like, all right, which one of you gets 20 touchdowns? Which one of you gets 2 ,000 receiving yards? right who hits the big milestone and then we'll go and give it to them between the two right now I think I lean JSN it's it's very very slight Colts fans I can't stress enough like how impressed I am with what Taylor has done this season Smith and Jigblatt it feels a little bit more like against all odds to me right I've seen Taylor have seasons like this before have stretches like this before obviously this is his best one um I feel like Taylor's doing a huge part carrying that Colts offense but JSN was more like oh my god this is out of nowhere right and this Vikings game was really the first moment where it ever felt like there was a little bit of wind outside of the sails, right?

22:34He's still averaging like whatever it is, 4.28 yards per route run. Like it's a number that is not only preposterous, it's like beyond what we thought really like a player could do, right? And so I lean JSN between him and Taylor. I do think Christian McCaffrey, who's on pace at the second 1 ,000-1 ,000 yard season, is a much closer three than people are giving him credit for. But right now in this moment, I think it's still two-horse race, Taylor and JSN. I got JSN as well. Yeah. I mean, the yards per route run numbers, the second since 2000 of like over 800 wide receivers. I mean, I just, yeah, that's what the defense focused on stopping him.