NFL MVP Is No Runaway

While fans must wait weeks after the end of baseball's regular season for the announcement of the yearly awards as voted by newspaper writers, NFL treats their fans to a much earlier arrival of the sport's best players.

The MVP award will be given out soon, and while there is much speculation about who is going to take home this year's trophy, we can be sure of one thing:

There won't be a repeat.

Since there is no landslide candidate who set multiple individual records and led his team to many more, the discussion of which player is the MVP leads to fans attempting to skew the definition of what it means to be truly "valuable."

But there are a handful of candidates who have separated themselves.

Peyton Manning led an incredible resurgence by the Indianapolis Colts to win their final nine games to finish the season 12-4. Philip Rivers took his play and his team from the doldrums and picked-up a terrible Chargers' defense en route to stealing the AFC West division crown.

The Titans' Albert Hayensworth, Miami's Joey Porter, and Pittsburg's James Harrison all had amazing defensive seasons for playoff teams. Michael Turner consistently ran the ball effectively and helped along a young team and a rookie quarterback to put a team in the playoffs that had no business in the preseason to believe they should be playing in January.

But in a very tight year for dominant performers, there is no one more deserving for this year's MVP than the Vikings' Adrian Peterson. Yes, he had trouble with fumbles, but everyone is gunning for AP while he is on the field.

Defenses line up with eight and nine guys in the box and he still rips off huge gains and led the NFL in rushing yardage in a year with a lot of great running back performances.

But what makes Peterson truly the most "valuable" player is not only the way defenses lined up against the Vikings this season, but also the rotation they had at quarterback. Neither Gus Frerotte nor Tarvaris Jackson put defensive coordinators in a position where they had to respect their abilities passing the football.

Also, when we look at the best teams statistically running the football this year (teams that had over 2,000 total yards: both New York teams, Atlanta,Carolina, Baltimore, Minnesota, Tennessee and Washington), the thing that sticks out is the fact that most great running teams now employ a two, sometimes three-headed monster at running back.

The Panthers have "Smash 'n Dash" with DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart; the Giants have "Earth, Wind, and Fire," and the Patriots featured four running backs all season long.

Minnesota has a good backup in Chester Taylor, but Peterson gets more than the lion's share in carries and he deserves the MVP for literally running his team to a division title and into the playoffs.