Bills win despite trying to lose, and the NFL MVP debate

Football playoff time is here, and there is one question on the lips of most NFL fans—what the heck are the Buffalo Bills doing in the post-season?

According to the FiveThirtyEight website these Bills aren't particularly good.  That’s okay, lots of not-great teams make the playoffs; several years ago the 7-9 Seahawks made the playoffs and won a game. But what is surprising is that these Bills apparently deliberately lost a game in mid-season, indicating they thought at that point in time that taking was a better strategy than winning.

The Bills had a week 11 game against the San Diego, er, excuse me, Los Angeles Chargers.  The Chargers, playing at home, were mere 1 point favorites, so the game was winnable by the Bills.  But then the brilliant Buffalo Bills head coach, Sean McDermott, made a brilliant decision; he would bench uninjured starting quarterback Tyrod Taylor, and instead start nascent superstar Nathan Peterman.  Yes, that Nathan Peterman, who didn’t win the Heisman Award, wasn’t drafted in the first round, and had never done anything indicating that continued employment in the NFL was a reasonable prospect.

The result was a shocking one for everyone in Nathan Peterman’s immediate family but absolutely no one else—Peterman threw five interceptions and the Bills lost 54-24.  I suppose you have to give the Bills’ coach some credit for not sticking with future superstar Nathan Peterman and instead going back to starting Tyrod Taylor, who then led the Bills to a win against the Kansas City Chiefs the next week and ultimately proceeded to get the Bills into the playoffs.  By the way, I think this means the Nathan Peterman Era in Buffalo is over.

So, the Bills make the NFL playoffs with a 9-7 record that might have been 10-6 if they hadn’t punted that game against the Chargers.  Of course, the MVP for the Bills was probably Andy Dalton of the Bengals, whose late touchdown pass on a 4^th and 12 situation knocked the Ravens out of the playoffs and put the Bills in.  But when 2017 concludes and you make the post-season for the first time that century, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

The outcome of the NFL playoffs doesn’t affect the MVP vote, as it is a regular season award, but I think that is especially true this year.  By the way, why is there only one; baseball has one for each league, shouldn’t the NFL have one for both conferences?  Anyway, I usually argue that an MVP has to go to a player in a playoff team, but this year that’s not the case.  This year we have a clear case for a non-playoff bound player as MVP.

Carson Wence will deservedly get lots of votes, and might even win, but face it, the Eagles can still win with someone else at QB.  But look at the San Francisco 49ers: they were 0-10 and vying with Cleveland for the first pick in the draft, they started Jimmy Garappolo, and they finished 6-0.  From 0-10 to 6-0, and all after trading for a new quarterback.  I think that clearly makes Garappolo the MVP from last season.

Of course we should wait to see if the 49ers go 16-0 next season, but that's not how these things work.  Garappolo took a winless team, and they never lost again.  If that's not valuable, what is?