LA Rams QB Matthew Stafford won the NFL MVP vote by the narrowest of margins so naturally people wanted to find out who was responsible for creating that razor-thin gap between him and New England Patriots QB Drake Maye. As it turns out, one voter volunteered the info - and is getting crushed for it.
It was longtime NFL analyst Sam Monson who took to X shortly after Stafford's win at the NFL Honors show and announced that he had given his vote to LA Chargers QB Justin Herbert. He cited Herbert's ability to seemingly "work miracles" with the team to get them into the playoffs as his rationale for voting on him.
"I was the Justin Herbert vote. The guy had the worst offensive line in the NFL all season and despite that he was working miracles in almost every single game. Stafford's OL became 2/5ths as bad as Herbert's for 5 minutes and he became a turnover howitzer. He embodied 'value'," Monson wrote on X.
The Backlash
As you'd expect Patriots fans were furious that Monson would vote for Herbert over someone with a real chance of actually winning the award (like Maye), but plenty of other fans from all walks of life gave their own arguments for Monson to simply lose his voting privileges.
"If you didn’t vote for Maye or Stafford, you either don’t understand meaningful voting or weren’t acting in good faith. MVP isn’t a personal philosophy exercise it’s literally about impact on outcomes. This reads less like analysis and more like engagement bait. You made the vote about you and a contrarian definition of “value” instead of casting a serious ballot. Pretty poor use of credentialing," one user replied on X.
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"You really just trying to be different. There was a clear top two and you weren’t even close to either of them. Probably did it for these interactions and just trying to get clicks. Hopefully they take away your vote by next year," wrote another.
"You should not have a vote after this. You probably shouldn’t have a job," a third wrote.
Herbert led the Chargers to the playoffs after going 11-5 as a starter with a 66.4% completion rate, 3,727 yards and 26 touchdowns with 13 interceptions. The team subsequently went one-and-done in the playoffs. Though by then, the votes had already been cast.
You can't please everybody.