Much has been said and written in the past week regarding the decision by 16 sportswriters to make Patriots receiver Julian Edelman the MVP of Super Bowl LIII. One of those 16 voters, Mike Reiss of ESPN.com, has an idea that perhaps should have been the right answer: The entire Patriots defense.
It’s a twist to the argument made by Chris Simms on PFT Live this week that Pats coach Bill Belichick should have been the MVP (notwithstanding the fact that the “P” stands for “player”), and it’s a way to collectively honor the effort that allowed the Patriots to hold the Greatest Show-offs on Turf Part Two to only three points.
An outside-the-box outcome like that would never happen under the current procedure, which harvests votes even before the game ends. But it wouldn’t take much to tweak things a bit to allow the 16 voters to confer and discuss the situation briefly before voting.
Given the protracted delay that now unfolds between the firing of the confetti cannons and the handing of the trophy from the Commission to the owner of the winning team, the 16 voters could get together somewhere in the Super Bowl stadium and discuss the worthy candidates before casting their ballot via text message to the appropriate NFL representative.
It would be an easy thing to do, but it won’t be easy to pierce through the antiquated realities of the Super Bowl press box, which features a farm of old-school copiers and an endless supply of Dunder Mifflin’s primary product being passed around in the form of first-quarter stats, halftime stats, third-quarter stats, full-game stats, and a never-ending array of quote sheets.
Nothing against Edelman, but his stats made him the most obvious candidate for MVP, given the manner in which the MVP votes currently are cast. If a more deliberate and collaborative process were utilized, the voters may have decided on someone else -- or maybe on the entire New England defense.