NFL MVP: Who's Leading, Who's Lagging, and Who Should Be Turning Heads

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After just barely two months of regular season play we've already seen players rise and fall, teams championed one week and dismissed the next, and a host of MVP candidates fall by the wayside.

But as interesting as the twists and turns of the 2009 season have been, the MVP race is shaping up to be an historic one.

We've got great running backs you'd never expect, one quarterback who could shatter the single season yardage mark, another QB who could lead his team to an undefeated season, and another QB is on pace to throw more passes in a single year than anyone before him.

Add to that the fact that the single season interception mark for a defender might also fall (outside shot) and it's looking like one barn-burner of a competition for MVP.

Let's look at the top couple candidates and their cases for being named the league's best expense, while also throwing in a few dark horse candidates who could really turn it on late with easy second-half schedules.

(NOTE: All stats are prior to Week 8 unless otherwise noted)

No. 1 in the Book: Drew Brees

Brees is small for an NFL quarterback at barely over six feet. He can barely see over his offensive line. He was once compared, by Union-Tribune columnist Tim Sullivan, to the writer's dinged, dented, and worn-out Dodge:

"I'll get around to getting a new car right after Marty Schottenheimer gets around to getting a new quarterback.

For now, I'm content with the Breesmobile.

There's a parallel here somewhere, and a certain amount of obstinacy. Like Schottenheimer, I'm wondering why I should go to all of the trouble of breaking in a brand-new model when the old one is almost adequate"

Sullivan wrote that back in 2004 , when the Philip Rivers/Drew Brees controversy was still fresh.

I think it's safe to say the 29-year-old Drew Brees won't be described as "almost adequate" too often this season.

Still, Brees is used to being disrespected, even when he puts up the numbers. Last season, for example, he threw for 5069 yards, a whole 15 yards short of Marino's record. And he did that without a healthy Marques Colston for much of the year.

How many MVP votes did Brees garner for coming 200 yards closer to the record than any QB since Marino set the record (including 2001 MVP Kurt Warner and 2007 MVP Tom Brady)? Nada. Not a single vote . This in a year when Chad Pennington had four votes out of 50.

This year, he's going to be impossible to overlook.

Not when his quarterback rating (a flawed statistic, but useful as a baseline comparison) is a plump 106.9 for the season and he's on pace to, once again, throw for more than 4,500 yards and, despite all the odds, his season is likely to get much better.

Plenty of teams feast on easy early schedules, driving their stars to MVP-calibre stats. Sometimes it's just a matter of beating what's in front of you, sometimes a player benefits from that early opening and fades down the stretch. There are guys in this very list who will fall into each category.

But let's look at who Brees has put up such fantastic numbers against this season:

Week 1: Detroit

Week 2: @ Philadelphia

Week 3: @ Buffalo

Week 4: New York Jets

Week 5: Bye

Week 6: New York Giants

Week 7: @ Miami

Now Detroit is a bit of a soft game for most QBs, but Buffalo, the two New York teams, Philadelphia, and Miami all have pass defenses which are certainly talented and have performed well.

Miami and the Giants can always get after the passer while Buffalo, the Jets, and Philly are all superb cover teams.

It may be why Brees' is "only" throwing for 283 yards/game right now with "only" 14 touchdowns (though that number is skewed by the 6 he threw against Detroit, throwing for exactly 0 scores against Buffalo and the Jets).

The rest of the year the best pass defense he'll have to face is Carolina (twice), but Carolina is giving up heaps of points, though they yield few yards in the air.

What's more enticing is the fact that of the remaining 10 games on the Saints' schedule, seven are played in domes. The other three are played in Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Tampa—hardly the most difficult travel or weather conditions for a QB to throw in.

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