Comeback Player of the Year

In my mind, I always thought that the Comeback Player of the Year was a player who had a bad year or two and then came back to have a fantastic season. Many players have lousy years because devastating injuries forced them not to play at all some seasons.

Peyton Manning missed an entire season with a horrible neck injury, an injury so bad that his team decided to release him and go with a rookie quarterback. Many experts thought his career was probably over just because of the strength he'd probably lose in his shoulders even AFTER the neck was repaired.

Manning came back and has now led Denver to a tie with the best record in the AFC while winning his division going away. He's also having another career year in stats establishing himself once more as one of the best quarterbacks in the league while all the while learning a new team's offense.

Should he win the Comeback Player of the year Award? Of course, no one else even remotely qualifies.

What surprises me is that people are talking about Adrian Peterson in the same breath. Adrian only missed ONE game last year. He had 975 yards rushing when the injury happened and would have easily had 1,000 yards rushing if he hadn't got hurt. But he never had a bad year last year. He had great stats, cut down on his turnovers, and missed one game because of the devastating injury.

He came back to play very well after surgery, but he was playing well BEFORE the surgery and he never missed any significant time. In other words, he can't be Comeback Player of the Year because he never LEFT in the first place and he never had a bad year BEFORE coming back.

Adrian is having an MVP-type season, but he simply doesn't qualify for the comeback award.

He's more like a kid coming home from his FIRST weekend at college and going around town and asking all of his friends if they missed him. They never knew he was gone. We never noticed Adrian was gone either.

Because he wasn't.

Manning for MVP.