Tom Brady: Why the NFL's Best Quarterback in History Must Win the MVP Award

When this season is over, we will all have our excuses for why the NFL's best quarterback in history did not win the MVP award in this, his finest season.

Leave aside the statistics. Tom Brady, the best winner in the NFL, the heart and soul of Bill Belichick's NFL records and the best of all time, is bound to be lost in the many claims and counterclaims concerning his performance this year, and for that matter any year in the NFL.

Let's not forget that Brady was honored with both the AP Male Athlete of the Year and NFL MVP in 2007:

"In 2004 and 2007, Brady was named 'Sportsman of the Year' by The Sporting News. He was also named the 2007 NFL MVP, as well as 2007 Male Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, the first time an NFL player has been honored since Joe Montana won in 1990."

Most of the current talk is about Michael Vick because of his play in his last game against the New York Giants. Call it whatever you want, but the fact is that the Giants were ahead by three touchdowns in large part due to Vick.

So when he rallies the troops back from a lead he had lost, when people make much of his "huge" talent and when players and others claim if he does not become the MVP, it will be racism, remember this: Vick is what his entire team is. Philadelphia has done little more than in years past. Their coach, running and passing along the margins, is the same as won so many times before.

Special? Perhaps in some ways. Forever tainted. Without a doubt. One will never be able to look at Vick without thinking of the dogs—pictures so grotesque and horrible one cannot even show them on TV. Vick as MVP?

We can also turn to the Philip Rivers fan fest full of former quarterbacks who laud his accuracy and excellence. The "anyone but Brady" crowd. As they have become more and more outdistanced by the obvious shortcomings of their choice, they turn to others.

The normal "turn-to" is the old standard Peyton Manning. They use the excuse that Manning is better because he has "never had a running game" or that he is no choker even though he cannot win the big games or much of anything that counts.

We have Atlanta's current quarterback and other lesser lights. Yet we have to say, at the end, that they are just excuses.

Remember this.

Brady has managed to revive a group of youngsters and over-the-hill receivers into a team, meshing the best of each into a winner that is the odds-on favorite to win Brady a fourth Super Bowl ring. In an age of great quarterbacks, perhaps the best group ever, he stands out. With the best defenses in the age of defense, we have a quarterback with no interceptions in so long it seems like he will never be intercepted again.

Brady is a man whose leadership brings out the best in everyone—whose grace and gentlemanly ways make even the coldest times on the most frozen fields seem tender and warm.

If this is not the MVP this year, the NFL will become yet another NBA—rewarding the most noisy and obnoxious and anti-establishment, anti-team athletes, instead of the steady rock that makes us all wish for another game highlighting him on TV.

If you want someone who makes the league tick, who has the highest-rated games, who has fans looking for the next televised game profiling the man because he is the Man, you have to vote for Tom Brady. Any other vote would be pure insanity.