Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco surprisingly gained the NFL’s Comeback Participant of the 12 months award on Thursday night time, beating out Buffalo Payments defensive again Damar Hamlin, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield and Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford.
Flacco joined the Browns late within the season as a free agent and took over the beginning quarterback job following the season-ending damage to Deshaun Watson. The Browns went 4-1 in his 5 regular-season begins to steer the groups playoffs.
Whereas Flacco’s story was positively a constructive one for him and the Browns, it’s actually troublesome to see the way it warrants successful a serious award. Particularly given a number of the different candidates within the league this season.
The slam dunk choose would have been Hamlin for his return to the sphere after struggling a cardiac arrest final season in a sport towards the Cincinnati Bengals. He didn’t play a serious position within the Payments protection this season, showing in simply 5 video games and recording solely two tackles. The counterpoint to that’s clearly that he practically died on the sphere and got here again the subsequent season to play NFL soccer.
There may be no person getting back from something greater than that. There may be additionally no person that will have questioned the end result if he had gained.
Even with that, there may be nonetheless a manufacturing and high quality of play ingredient to the award. To that extent, Flacco did produce greater than Hamlin.
However did he produce sufficient to warrant the award? And what precisely did he come again from? Particularly when in comparison with a participant like Stafford, who would have been a extra logical selection.
Not like Flacco, Stafford really got here again from a major damage that at one level was thought to doubtlessly finish his profession. He not solely performed all however one sport in the course of the season, he performed at an especially excessive degree all year long and was even higher than he was previous to his damage a yr in the past.
The one factor Flacco got here again from was being unsigned as a free agent to play at a barely larger degree than he did the yr earlier than.
It is only a unusual selection by the voters. Flacco did not play at a very excessive degree and he did not come again from something that put his profession in jeopardy. These are often the varieties of gamers that win this award. Flacco did not match any of that.
