Why did Terrell Davis win 1998 MVP?

[Joe_is_the_best]

Part of figuring out which player is more valuable is imagining how the team would fare without them. In a vacuum, average QB's are more valuable than great RB's. In this case, we're talking about a transcendent RB, whose team would have failed without him, versus an average QB, who wasn't much better than the backup, whose team wouldn't lose a beat without. 

[7DnBrnc53]

5 hours ago, SkippyX said:

If you want to see a real joke, go to 1987 when 18 idiots supporting the 49ers split the votes between clear MVP Jerry Rice and Scab Joe

• Joe started 9 real NFL games and 2 replacement games. His 102 rating was 18 points lower than Steve Young (3 real starts with 10 TDs and 0 picks)
• 5 of Joe's 31 TDs and 393 of his 3054 yards came in replacement games
• Rice had 22 TDs and 1 rushing TD in 12 real games. 
  • Montana threw 13 of them (in 351 passes), Young threw 8 (in 69 passes), and Harry Sydney threw 1 on a trick play.

Since the vote was split by ignorant clowns voting for Montana, Elway took the MVP award.

• Elway 36 votes??? (as a QB he combined for 23 TDs, the same as Rice at WR and his passer rating was 83.4)
• Rice 30
• Montana 18
• Note: Reggie White wiped the floor with Montana in the real games too (21 sacks in 12 real games)

The Voters get an absolute F for this voting. The real MVP was Rice with White in 2nd.

Elway's stats were pretty good that year. He had almost 3,200 yards passing and 19 TD passes in 12 games. Also, he was the whole team. They aren't in San Diego at the end of the year without him.

Rice fattened his stats against below .500 teams like the Bengals, Cardinals, Falcons, Rams, and Packers (he had eight TD's of five yards or less, including a few one-yard TD catches because the Niners were better at tricking teams than dominating the line of scrimmage).

Edited November 20, 2019 by 7DnBrnc53

[TENINCH]

5 hours ago, Joe_is_the_best said:

Part of figuring out which player is more valuable is imagining how the team would fare without them. In a vacuum, average QB's are more valuable than great RB's. In this case, we're talking about a transcendent RB, whose team would have failed without him, versus an average QB, who wasn't much better than the backup, whose team wouldn't lose a beat without. 

Cunningham not much better than Johnson?

[BayRaider]

MVP is a mix of value, stats, and wins. Not just the best QB in the best team, regardless of offensive greatness. 

Cunningham was extremely fun to watch. But didn’t provide a supreme value or have the gaudy stats.

And this is coming from someone who was a huge 98 Vikings fan as a kid. Solely Raiders all the time now, and Raiders first back then, but as a kid I loved the 96 and 97 Packers and 98 Vikings. Collected like every Cunningham and Moss trading card there was that year.  

[waterfish_21]

Because the NFL MVP is a QB / RB award.  1 kicker, 1 DT and 1 LB are the only other positions to win it in almost 70 years of voting.  Stop worrying about this award, nobody cares about it.  The reason  TD won it was because Randy Moss was the best player on the Vikings, and almost everyone knew it, even in his rookie year.  So the voters couldn't give the credit to Cunningham.

[Jlowe22]

28 minutes ago, waterfish_21 said:

  Stop worrying about this award, nobody cares about it.  

I agree to an extent.  There’s only one award to give, but often more than one player with that caliber of season.  It’s a largely subjective thing that people give too much weight too.  

[mistakey]

22 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

So in 1998 the Minnesota Vikings offense put up historic numbers.

In the last two seasons offenses that scored on above 50% of their drives for the year have produced the MVP winner every time.

The other offenses in the past twenty years with above 50% scoring were the 2018 Saints (Brees loss to Mahomes), 2018 Chiefs (Mahomes won MVP), 2017 Patriots (Brady MVP), 2016 Falcons (Ryan MVP), 2013 Broncos (Manning MVP), 2011 Packers (Rodgers MVP), 2011 Saints (Brees loses to Rodgers), 07 Patriots (Tom Brady won), 2006 Colts (Manning MVP).

The only QB who DIDN’T win the MVP in a season his offense hit this mark was Drew Brees... and only because he was unlucky enough to achieve the feat when a younger upstart taking the league by storm accomplished it the same year in Mahomes and Rodgers respectively.

By comparison the Broncos offense wasn’t nearly as efficient. I didn’t watch football at that point. So why did Randy Moss or Randall Cunningham not win the MVP that season over Terrell Davis? Was the race close? What were the dynamics back then?

yo bro terrell davis was the absolute s***

unstoppable.

 

[diamondbull424]

57 minutes ago, mistakey said:

yo bro terrell davis was the absolute s***

unstoppable.

 

Yeah. My parents weren’t big football people and basketball was the sport I gravitated to as a kid. So at this point I was probably upset at Shaq for breaking up the Orlando Magic (I was a kid) because he and Penny were my favorite.

The greatest show on turf and everyone talking about it made me watch that SB. But even then it wasn’t until everyone in Baltimore kept talking about this crazy defense the team had that I started to fall in love with football.

So I had always heard Davis was a stud and never questioned this MVP, especially since it was more of a RB split on the award back then.

But I also never quite understood just how good that Vikings offense was in respect to the rest of the league. Looking up the numbers I was just amazed to see that they had a 8.5% and 13.1% increase over the next closest team when it came to scoring drive percentage. Which was similarly dominant to the 07 Patriots lead over the Colts (8.8%) and Jags (13.6%). And until the 2006 Colts no offense, including the greatest show on turf had over a 50% scoring efficiency from that earlier period of the 2000s. So obviously I assumed the QB rule changes is what allowed for that natural increase and it probably did. But the 98 Vikings eclipsed that 50% threshold in a time when most other elite offenses like the 99/00 (41.2%/48.3%) Rams were in the 40% range.

So that was enough shock from me to wonder what it must’ve been like to watch that offense destroy teams and for no individual award of serious significance, be it MVP to Cunningham or an OPOY award to Moss, be lauded to them. It’s the only anomaly of the sort I’ve seen.

I haven’t compiled the numbers completely but my next project is to see if the MVP has ever been given to a player on an offense outside the top 3 in scoring efficiency, and since Football Outsiders began compiling these stats in 1994 and just based off the quick eyeball test it’s never happened.

[diamondbull424]

That and I want to see what were the biggest scoring efficiency gaps in that time since 1994. Right now the 98 Vikings aforementioned 8.5% and the 07 Patriots 8.8% have the biggest gap over the field.

I only got into looking up these things for the Lamar MVP argument, but now it’s gotten to be quite an intriguing research. For anyone interested, currently the Ravens (57.3%) have the highest number since Football Outsiders has tracked drive scoring in 1994 and their offensive gap over the rest of the league is sitting at 7.8% where the Chiefs (49.5%) hold second place and 9.8% over Dallas (47.5%) in third place. Still a lot of football to be played though.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who broke down this anomaly for me. You really can’t always get a grasp for old sports understanding unless you lived it sometimes. As stats can only tell part of the story as this shows.

[diamondbull424]

Looks like the only other anomalies I’ve found in the history of the MVP dating back to 1993 were with RBs. Adrian Peterson and Barry Sanders (tied with Favre who met the requirements) were the only players who were on an offense that didn’t finish top 3 in offensive scoring efficiency. With Peterson though his team had the highest field goal percentage efficiency in the NFL for that season.

Also no QB has ever won the award while his offense finished outside of the top 3 in offensive scoring efficiency. The only times where the QB with the #1 offensive scoring efficiency didn’t win the award happened with Peyton Manning the year he tied with Steve McNair and three times with Drew Brees where Peyton beat him, Rodgers beat him, and Mahomes beat him... no QB has seemingly had worse MVP luck than Drew Brees with this award.

Also IFFFF Russell Wilson were to win the award this season he would be the other anomaly. Currently his offensive is ranked #7 in OSE. If he were to beat Lamar Jackson he would be the first QB outside the top 3 to win the award. Lamar Jackson would also become the first QB with above a 55% OSE offense to lose the award. Only Randall Cunningham/Moss were the only others to not win the award with over 50% OSE, but Davis offense finished in the top 3 OSE which fit that benchmark.

Anyways very interesting stuff.

[SkippyX]

It cracks me up when people cry about short career superstars going into the Hall of Fame.

Terrell Davis was a greater player in '96-'98 (including 8 playoff games) than guys like Curtis Martin or Jerome Bettis were over their entire careers combined.

He had 65 TDs in those 55  games. He averaged 4.8 per carry in those regular seasons and 5.6 in the playoffs.

112.7 rushing yards per game in those regular seasons and 142.5 in those 8 playoff games.

[Jlowe22]

6 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

Also no QB has ever won the award while his offense finished outside of the top 3 in offensive scoring efficiency. The only times where the QB with the #1 offensive scoring efficiency didn’t win the award happened with Peyton Manning the year he tied with Steve McNair and three times with Drew Brees where Peyton beat him, Rodgers beat him, and Mahomes beat him... no QB has seemingly had worse MVP luck than Drew Brees with this award.

Yep, he's been second in MVP voting 4 times.  I think he could have won it in 2009, but that's a debate for another day.  His 2011 season could have won it many years.  He had all his best seasons at the wrong times.  

[Heinz D.]

On 11/19/2019 at 11:08 AM, Elky said:

That's absolutely sad.

Montana's the most overrated player in NFL history. I'll never get tired of pointing that out. 

[TENINCH]

1 hour ago, Heinz D. said:

Montana's the most overrated player in NFL history. I'll never get tired of pointing that out. 

My vote goes to Joe Namath

[TecmoSuperJoe]

On 11/20/2019 at 10:28 AM, 7DnBrnc53 said:

Elway's stats were pretty good that year. He had almost 3,200 yards passing and 19 TD passes in 12 games. Also, he was the whole team. They aren't in San Diego at the end of the year without him.

Rice fattened his stats against below .500 teams like the Bengals, Cardinals, Falcons, Rams, and Packers (he had eight TD's of five yards or less, including a few one-yard TD catches because the Niners were better at tricking teams than dominating the line of scrimmage).

Good players dominate bad teams. Rice dunking on cellar dwellers in 1987 was a good thing.

Edited November 21, 2019 by PapaShogun