“May you live in interesting times” — Anonymous

These were interesting times in the NFL, indeed.

After an eventful off-season, this season gave us a unique version of parity with two very distinct tiers of teams: one very good, the other very broken. Ten different teams lost ten games or more — that’s nearly an entire Playoffs of Suck right there! Seven teams missed the playoffs despite .500 records or better — an entire division finished with negative point differentials!

Naturally, the storylines make for fine discussions and rankings, so not only have we whittled down the MVP award candidates to five, but we took the liberty of putting together some additional real and should-be-real awards from one weird football season.

1. Fantasy Player of the Year

The first thing you need to know about the FPotY is that this is a real award, not one of the joke ones I made up. The second thing you need to know is that NFL.com chose their nominees in the form of a fantasy roster—which means that, hilariously, Stephen Gostkowski is a finalist.

A quick trip to Yahoo’s “Keys to Success” leaderboard seems to imply that this is an open-and-shut case — quarterback Andrew Luck was owned by a whopping 61.2% of Top 500 teams in Yahoo’s Public Leagues! That’s almost 20 full points better than second-place LeVeon Bell.

But… most fantasy football championships take place on Week 16.

What happened here? Lightning hit the transmitter?

In the interest of consolidating all the hate mail to come, a simple rule going forward: if you bludgeoned your teams’ owners over the head with 0.36 points of mushy diarrhea during Championship Week, you’re disqualified from winning “Fantasy Player of the Year.” Simple as that.

So my pick is Bell. In my league, he was a late second-round pick in the Andre Ellington/Alfred Morris/Doug Martin tier. Four weeks later he was swapped straight up for Jimmy Graham. And his performance down the stretch—he was the top-ranked back for scoring in Weeks 13, 14, and 15 when you needed it most—makes even that trade look like a bargain.

Plus, he writes for The Cauldron!

2. The Daunte Culpepper Memorial Award for Fantasy Bust of the Year

Adrian Peterson was a consensus top-four pick whose legal troubles limited him to one game and fewer than 100 total yards. He won this dishonor with such authority that we might need to rename it The Adrian Peterson Memorial Award next year.

Bonus points for the tantalizing will-he-or-won’t-he dance that inevitably destroyed even more seasons, because you just couldn’t bring yourself to drop the bastard while there was a chance he would play. At least when Carson Palmer and Nick Foles got hurt, their owners had the luxury of using that roster spot on someone else.

3. Football Play of the Year

This is not a contest, it is merely an excuse to watch Odell Beckham Jr. wantonly disregard the laws of physics a few more times.

As if Calvin Johnson’s Justin Verlander-like regression to humanity wasn’t devastating enough on its own, here comes this new hotness to one-handedly yank away the “athletic freak of nature wideout” title belt. Not since the Honda Civic first came stateside has Detroit watched their prized possession get shown up like this.

4. The Andre Rison Memorial Award for Most Dysfunctional Dating Life

Oh, you thought Ray Rice was going to start his sweep of all the dishonors here, didn’t you? I’d be lying if I said Rice wasn’t a finalist — brutalizing his girlfriend on camera, covering up the incident, marrying the girl, showing a zero self-awareness with the press, and generally turning into the cleated Chris Brown left him with an impressive resume to consider.

But he didn’t get the police called to his house for domestic disturbances on THREE separate occasions. No, that was 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald.

On the first occasion, back in May, McDonald called the cops himself, as his girlfriend had grabbed one of his registered handguns. According to the police report, she didn’t point the weapon at him or threaten him at any point. Just held it at her side. This was barely enough to register in the off-season news.

Three months later, the cops were back at the McDonald homestead. This time, McDonald’s girlfriend had bruises on her arms and neck, and McDonald was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. Since the district attorney never charged McDonald with anything, neither the 49ers nor the NFL took disciplinary action.

Less than two weeks ago, reports broke that the police had been summoned again. The law-enforcement hat trick took McDonald only seven months to achieve, and for the Niners, it was the last straw. They released him the next day.

5. Comeback Player of the Year

(AP)

I’m going to give a nod of acknowledgement to Tom Brady here, who staged one of the greatest in-season comebacks ever. Does anyone else vaguely remember Week 5, when people were seriously wondering if the Patriots should trade away Brady and turn it over to Jimmy Garoppolo?

But this award can only go to Mark Sanchez. The former butt-fumbling Jets castoff filled in admirably for the injured Nick Foles at quarterback, and despite struggling with interceptions, led the Eagles to four wins. He’s never going to win an MVP award, but the sad sack who was once benched for Greg McElroy two years ago is solidly in the rearview mirror. And, even more hilariously, he outplayed everybody the Jets threw behind center this year.

6. The More Doctors Smoke Camels Award for Shameless Commercialization

The NFL, in case you missed it, now stands firmly against domestic violence — just as long as the crimes are public knowledge and the perp’s jersey sales are cratering. Remember, this video started airing when Roger Goodell was still trying to convince us that he hadn’t seen the Ray Rice elevator video before September. You know, during October — Breast Cancer Awareness Month — or “that month the NFL gets too pink for its own good.”

If the league hadn’t made an unofficial policy of sweeping domestic violence cases under the rug, this might have actually had an impact. A bunch of veterans talking candidly about such an important topic? That’d make a difference. That’d open eyes, and start a meaningful discussion. This, on the other hand, was a rushed compilation of a couple of willing, friendly faces—the athlete-PSA version of a Band Aid.

7. Defensive Rookie of the Year

Damn it, Jadeveon, this award was gift-wrapped for you! There wasn’t even supposed to be a discussion! Sadly, the first overall pick was limited by injuries, appeared in just four games, and didn’t register a sack this year.

San Francisco third-round linebacker Chris Borland took a couple of weeks to break into the defensive rotation, but once he did, he quickly established himself as the anchor of the Niners’ defense. He hit double-digit tackle totals in five of his eight starts, and even posted a signature performance — intercepting Eli Manning twice during their Week 11 tilt.

Borland, a smallish Wisconsin alum who spent his entire tenure in Madison making plays, slipped to the third round because of concerns he wasn’t big enough. He got picked up by a competitive West coast team, and stepped into a starring role for them sooner than anyone saw coming. That’s a description that sounds DangeRussly familiar…

8. The Affluenza Award

On March 16, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay was pulled over in a traffic stop. Irsay was deliriously fucked up on multiple prescription painkillers, failed field sobriety tests, and was eventually convicted of operating while intoxicated. Though he has a decades-long history of abusing prescription narcotics, the league suspended him for just six games.

At some point this off-season, Josh Gordon was popped for marijuana use during a random drug test. Sweet mary jane, of course, happens to be fully legal in two states and approved for medicinal use in tens of others. Gordon’s initial suspension was for the entire season — but was later reduced to ten games.

The lesson here, as always? The richer you are, the cleaner you get away with it. ‘Murica.

9. Offensive Rookie of the Year

Forgive me if I turn into a small, three-year-old child on a roller coaster here for a second but…

AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!

2014 may end go down as the year of the wide receiver — bringing us an a gaggle of impact pass-catchers out of the draft. Sammy Watkins showed flashes of the superstar potential that caused Buffalo to trade up for him. Mike Evans was the lone bright spot for a Tampa team that inexplicably managed to make this year’s campaign even worse than last year’s “untreatably infected locker room” fiasco.

Beckham, Jr. captured our imagination, again and again. He made catches that shouldn’t have been made. He posted gaudy stat line after gaudy stat line, always staying one step ahead of defenses.

Like Borland, Beckham didn’t break the plane of relevancy until over a month into the season. But his meteoric ascent to the elite tier of NFL wideouts once that happened was more than enough to prove himself worthy of this award.

10. The Rodney Dangerfield Memorial Award for Failing to Catch a Break

(AP)

You could replay Carson Palmer’s career a hundred times and I’m pretty sure what has transpired over the last decade would not come up in any simulation.

Palmer was just 26, playing in his third pro season, when Kimo von Oelhoffen hit him low on the first play of his first playoff game, mangling his knee. He returned to form, despite the initial thought that his career might be over — only to suffer another devastating, season-ending injury three seasons later. This time it was his elbow that went, and this time the rehab wouldn’t go so well.

Two more mediocre post-injury seasons with the Bengals and Palmer found himself exiled to Oakland. The Raiders gave him no weapons to work with on offense, sputtered for two seasons, then flipped him at a loss to Arizona. Last year’s Palmer stat line was right in line with his Oakland performances — with a competent defense, however, the Cardinals managed a ten-win season.

This year, however, Palmer got off to the best start of his career. Posting his best QB rating since that ’05 breakout year, Palmer won his first six starts despite missing several games with a shoulder problem. At the ripe old age of 35, a full five years removed from his second and last playoff game, Palmer finally seemed to have found a winning home — through their first eight games, the Cards were a league-best 7–1.

Then, during the Week 10 tilt with the Rams, Palmer re-tore his surgically repaired knee. Game over, season over. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. And the Cardinals are left with Ryan Lindley in the postseason. Also-hobbled backup Drew Stanton was at least capable — Lindley isn’t even that.

11. Coach of the Year

(AP)

The Cardinals lost Palmer, yet still tied a franchise record with 11 regular season wins and made the playoffs for the first time since 2009. Backup Drew Stanton almost quadrupled his career win total. Running back Andre Ellington was a mediocre runner who more than made up for it with his work as a pass-catching back. And even though head coach Bruce Arians comes from the offensive side of the ball, the Arizona defense compared favorably with the mighty Seattle unit all season long. Even when Ryan Lindley inevitably throws three picks and blows this weekend’s playoff game, Arians must be lauded for the job he’s done in his second year at the helm in Arizona.

An honorable mention paragraph, though, for Doug Marrone. Marrone coached the Buffalo Bills to their first winning season in over a decade — major, major bonus points for his CotY candidacy. Then, he opted out of his contract. He’s leaving behind an offense that looks to be very, very underwhelming now that Kyle Orton has retired, and he’s heading onto the open market with his value at a high point. It was cruel, and Buffalo fans deserve better, but I have to admit he made the right career move.

12. The Timothy Richard Tebow Memorial Award for Biggest Discrepancy Between Value to ESPN and Actual Value

(AP)

While Michael Sam — who didn’t play a regular-season snap — got consideration here, at the end of the day, his story is bigger than just sports. Sam’s performance on the field was always going to be less important than the off-the-field stuff.

Johnny Manziel, on the other hand, does not have the luxury of being a social pioneer. He was also wholly uninspiring during his two late-season starts. The Browns started off 7–4, in line to make the playoffs for only the second time since being reincarnated in 1999. Without star wideout Josh Gordon, there was no need for anything more than a game manager behind center, and Brian Hoyer was winning games.

It’d be presumptuous to claim that the Browns lost their last five games — including four to playoff teams — because of the media speculation about the quarterback position. But it goes without saying that anyone who said that Manziel taking over the starting job would give the team a spark was proven wrong — he did, and it didn’t.

Ultimately, the Browns were screwed by their schedule — the relatively cushy early part gave them confidence, only to leave the franchise burned by a brutal stretch run. Inserting an overconfident rookie QB into the fray in the middle of that was probably the worst thing to do for his development. Maybe they avoid that pitfall if it’s not being shoved in their face during every press event.

Then there was the Friday-night rager Manziel allegedly threw before Week 17. Manziel throws massive party, Josh Gordon in attendance, Gordon suspended because he was AWOL for team activities the next day. It’s like they decided to remake The Perfect Storm. I’m guessing Deadspin has already dumped a ton of dough into R&D for a time machine to go back and get undercover footage of that night.

13. MVP Race Honorable Mention

Ben Roethlisberger and Tony Romo both were overshadowed by teammates who made the Top 5, but both played well enough to justify inclusion in the rundown.

Roethlisberger owned the mid-season with a two-week stretch for the ages. He became the first player in NFL history to sling six touchdown passes two weeks in a row in Weeks 8 and 9. At age 32 and presumed to be on the decline, Big Ben experienced an impressive Bennaissance this season, posting his best statistical year since he made his first trip to the Pro Bowl in 2007. Pittsburgh’s return to the playoffs, not surprisingly, coincided with his rebound.

Romo, on the other hand, measures up to MVP favorite Aaron Rodgers quite well statistically. The two are 1 and 1A in both traditional rating and QBR. Rodgers has better yardage numbers, Romo has been more accurate. Rodgers has avoided interceptions more successfully, Romo has three fourth-quarter comebacks. From a “Best Quarterback performance” standpoint, it’s an interesting debate.

But this isn’t the Best Player Award, it’s the MVP Award. And the Cowboys ranked 31st in the league in passing attempts. Romo was a change-of-pace guy in his own offense, not the go-to player who carried the team on his shoulders during the game’s most critical moments.

14. Most Valuable Player Award

5. DeMarco Murray

Spray Tan set the Cowboys’ single-season rushing record and finished as the runaway league leader this year, nearly 500 yards more than second-leading-rusher LeVeon Bell. The Cowboys leaned on him as a feature back in a way that just doesn’t happen in the 21st century. It’s his contract year, of course, so we should all look forward to some other team overpaying for a burned-out back, but that will be then, and this is now. And in this now, Murray averaged just under five yards per carry, tallying 100-plus scrimmage yards in all but one of Dallas’ 16 games. Murray’s 13 rushing touchdowns tied for the league lead, too.

You can definitely make a case that Murray outplayed almost everyone in the NFL this year. Thing is, though, if he had gotten injured, Romo and Dez Bryant were more than capable of handling a bigger share of the load. Furthermore, backup Joseph Randle’s 6.5 yards per carry in limited action implies he might have been capable of picking up some of the slack.

4. Antonio Brown

If you’re looking for a reason behind Roethlisberger’s turnaround, well, here it is. Brown did double duty as Pittsburgh’s top pass-catcher and punt returner this year, leading the NFL in receptions, receiving yards, and all-purpose yards. He even threw a touchdown pass against Houston, as if to flaunt his own jack-of-all-tradesmanship in front of J.J. Watt. And talk about week-to-week consistency: he never put up fewer than five catches or 50 yards.

Brown stepped in after the departure of Mike Wallace two seasons ago, and it’s obvious in hindsight why the Steelers were so confident letting Wallace hit the road. While Wallace is being run out of Miami on a bullet train, Brown is doing it all at a fraction of the cost for Pittsburgh.

3. Rob Gronkowski

Admittedly, I love Gronk. In a league increasingly focused on corporate rigidity and stuffiness, Gronk is a breath of fresh air. He bully-blocks linebackers out of bounds, just for funsies. He says things like “yo soy fiesta” on camera, which somehow only makes sense in the context of Gronk. He kicks off every off-season by turning his Spring Break into the beer-and-poon endurance event of the year. And he does this all under the scornful, but seemingly tolerant eye of Bill Belichick. If we all lived our lives a little bit more like Gronk, perhaps the world would be more fun.

Beyond him, the tight end position was a wasteland this season. Jimmy Graham and Julius Thomas came into the season with high expectations, but Thomas disappointed and Graham was inconsistent. Jordan Cameron was supposed to be this year’s Thomas, the sleeper who joins the ranks of the elite. Instead he battled injuries, and was ineffective when he even saw the field. Larry Donnell had a couple of elite weeks, then was next seen on the side of milk cartons.

Gronk posted his second-best season as a pro in 2014, staying healthy all year as he led the Patriots in both yards and touchdowns through the air. With a severely depleted corps of wide receivers, Tom Brady relied on his pet party animal as a safety blanket, and his uptick in production from Week 5 onwards was essential in New England becoming the Super Bowl favorite heading into the postseason.

1/1A: J.J. Watt and Aaron Rodgers

I mean, we’ve already seen a bunch of really wacky shit this year, right?

We saw a team with a losing record win their division thanks to a missed field goal as time ran out in overtime during Week 6, giving them a miracle tie when their Win Probability was 0.4%.

We saw a guy come out of the closet BEFORE the draft. To those too young to have been around back then—even fifteen years ago, that’d have been career suicide. Now, that’s no longer the case—and there are lots of older folks who know that, once upon a time, this was an even more unlikely happening than that tie.

We saw someone with a reputation as an All-World dirty player deliberately step on the injured calf of a rival quarterback. We saw a devout Muslim honor his faith with a touchdown celebration. The punishment for both was the same.

We saw a man toss his girlfriend around an elevator like she was made of fluff. The man’s team, and the NFL commissioner, saw this too. They decided that the man’s value as an earner for their organization was great enough to justify publicly whitewashing the abuse. Until the public got wind of it anyway—then they abruptly flip-flopped and acted genuinely surprised whenever anyone attempted to call them out on it.

If you’re going to argue against J.J. Watt winning the award on the basis of “he’s a defensive player and they don’t win the MVP,” well, I don’t care to listen. This has been the year of once-in-a-lifetime.

“Watt vs. Rodgers” is about as intellectually challenging a debate as we’ve seen in recent memory, sports-wise. The two “Trout vs. Cabrera” tilts were entertaining, but the sabermetrics debate honestly reminds me an awful lot of the Young Earth Creationism debate—only one side is bringing real arguments to the fight, the other ones are just amusing idiots fighting off irrelevancy.

How do you compare a dominant quarterback to a dominant defensive lineman? Statistically, you don’t. Rodgers posted an interception rate of approximately 1%. Watt led his team in tackles as a defensive end. Rodgers paced the league in adjusted yards per attempt. Watt accumulated 20 sacks for the second time in three seasons. Try forming a comparison on those, I dare ya.

All the numbers can tell us is that these guys are both really, really, really good. Which one is better? Well, our numbers can’t figure that much out yet.

You don’t see a lot of defensive players win MVP because the offense sets the pace in football. Dominant defensive players can usually be neutralized, to an extent, by gameplanning away from them—a luxury that the defense doesn’t have when that superstar is taking the snap or handoff every play. The best defensive units, generally speaking, are the ones with no holes—not the ones with the biggest stars.

Every once in a while, though, a defensive player will make himself impossible to avoid. Lawrence Taylor was a prime example — he was the last defensive player to take home the MVP award in 1986. J.J. Watt, this year, started making the case that he belongs in the same category. He posted 20 sacks, forced four fumbles, recovered five more, picked a pass off, and scored two defensive touchdowns. He was getting double and triple-teamed every single play, and it didn’t make a difference. Late in the year the Texans started using him in goal-line sets as a tight end, and he caught three touchdowns on offense — as if his defensive escapades weren’t enough.

While it is normal to give the MVP to a player on a playoff team, Watt was the unquestioned leader of a Texans team that finished with a winning record for just the fourth time in franchise history. They missed the playoffs only by a tiebreaker—and it’s easy to imagine that, without Watt, they’d have been the eleventh team with double-digit losses this year instead. It’s called the Most “Valuable” Player award, and there’s no argument against Watt in that regard.

The problem is, Aaron Rodgers might have been even more valuable to the Packers. Last year, Rodgers missed eight games due to injury—the Packers went 2–5–1 in those games. This year, the team started 1–2, including an ugly divisional loss to the Lions.

On his radio show that week, Rodgers channeled his inner Joe Montana for a now-legendary segment.

“Five letters here, just for everybody out there in Packer land,” Rodgers said. “R-E-L-A-X. Relax. We’re going to be OK.”

And, of course, he was right. With their quarterback available the entire season, the Packers went 11–2 the rest of the way. Rodgers was the best deep-ball passer in the league, averaging 8.4 yards per attempt with a top-10 completion percentage and throwing the fewest interceptions of any full-time starter. With Matt Flynn—or even someone like Alex Smith—leading this team, do the Packers make the playoffs? It’s far more likely that they end up on the outside looking in.

If the MVP wasn’t a two-horse race already, Week 17 made it so. Gronkowski sat, with the Patriots having nothing to play for. With the Texans still clinging to playoff hopes by a thread, Watt played the game of his life. He forced a fumble and sacked Blake Bortles three times, including a game-clinching safety with under six minutes to go. The Texans missed the playoffs on the tiebreaker, but Watt came up huge when his team needed him most.

Later that afternoon, Rodgers re-aggravated a calf injury in a de facto NFC North Championship Game and actually made “Willis Reed” trend on Twitter. Rodgers’ touchdown pass to Randall Cobb with 2:30 to play in the second left him clutching his leg on the ground, and the 14–0 lead was handed over to Matt Flynn for safekeeping. After the first series of the second half Rodgers emerged from the tunnel, looking vaguely like The Incredible Hulk in the green light. Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it better. Rodgers threw for another touchdown and even scored from less than a yard out on a quarterback sneak, bum leg and all. And there was the Suh Stomp. An aggressive reaction by a normally dominant player to being rendered impotent for four quarters by an offensive unit that just wouldn’t be denied.

I can easily make the case for either player, and making a comparative case against either is just as hard to do. So why not chop the award in half? Not literally, of course. Dual MVPs have been done before: in 2003, Peyton Manning shared the award with Steve McNair; Barry Sanders went halfsies on the 1997 honor with Rodgers’ predecessor, Brett Favre.

It would be a fitting end to a season that didn’t follow established patterns. In the end, when given the chance to make their closing arguments with everything on the line, both players played a game for the ages. They both earned it, so why not reward them both?