Less than 24 hours from a legacy cementing Super Bowl, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady won the National Football League’s “Most Valuable Player” award making it the third of his career.
Brady beat out the two other candidates in running back Todd Gurley II. and quarterback Carson Wentz with 40 votes to their eight and three respectively.
Patriots nation is celebrating, but there’s some of the crowd that’s a little nervous. Why is it a bad thing? It’s another feather in Brady’s cap and further cements his legacy as what people refer to him as the “G.O.A.T.”
But as Tom goes against time in his new online documentary, he’s going to have to face off not only against the Philadelphia Eagles, but against history.
Out of all the MVP winners this century which include some of the greatest names in the history of the sport like Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner, LaDainian Tomlinson, Adrian Peterson, and Tom Brady, none of them have won the Super Bowl in the same year.
Here’s the list of all the winners since the start of the new milennium in order.
- (2000) Marshall Faulk
- (2001) Kurt Warner
- (2002) Rich Gannon
- (2003) Peyton Manning
- (2003) Steve McNair
- (2004) Peyton Manning
- (2005) Shaun Alexander
- (2006) LaDainian Tomlinson
- (2007) Tom Brady
- (2008) Peyton Manning
- (2009) Peyton Manning
- (2010) Tom Brady
- (2011) Aaron Rodgers
- (2012) Adrian Peterson
- (2013) Peyton Manning
- (2014) Aaron Rodgers
- (2015) Cam Newton
- (2016) Matt Ryan
- (2017) Tom Brady*
* Yet to play Super Bowl
Again, not one of these MVP winners has won the award and then gone on to win the Super Bowl the same year.
If you would like to delve deeper into the superstition abyss, Brady also graces this season’s Madden NFL Cover, which has “cursed” the league’s best player a year after a career making season with an injury or devastating loss.
The most recent “victim” of said “curse” was Brady’s teammate tight end Rob Gronkowski who was voted to the cover last year but was sidelined for the season and did not play in Super Bowl LI due to injury.
Could this be ridiculous? Well Tom Brady at 40 years old, has been doing a lot of first time things that no player has done at that age. So would first M.V.P winner to also win a Super Bowl in the milennium join that list?
