The surprise decision of the 50 AP awards voters to make Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson the All-Pro quarterback but to make Bills quarterback Josh Allen the MVP, coupled with the AP’s unannounced (to the voters) disclosure of every voter’s full ballot has prompted unprecedented scrutiny as to how the NFL Honors sausage is made.
Then again, any scrutiny would be unprecedented scrutiny.
One question was raised, in surprisingly snarky fashion (stay out of my backyard, Tom) by an NFL Media employee who was and is mad, bro that he and his colleagues can’t participate: “If you’re wondering why the [AP] gives votes to people paid by sportsbooks, people from debate shows, people who own parts of NFL teams, people you’ve never even heard of, but nobody from NFL Network. . . . Yeah, me too.”
As to Brady having a vote, Tom Pelissero of NFL Media has a point. As to whether there are voters who probably don’t follow the NFL closely enough to have one, he also has a point. (The sports book and debate show gripe undermines his entire argument, however.)
We asked both the league and the AP for comment on Pelissero’s wrong-side-of-the-bed post, especially since it fires a not-so-subtle shot at Raiders minority owner/majority voice Tom Brady, whom the AP allowed to vote this year despite his obvious conflict of interest. The league declined comment. The AP said this: “It is our longstanding policy that we do not include voters from AP or NFL Media to maintain separation between the voting process and the two awarding organizations.”
Longstanding policies are made to be revised, especially when Brady has gotten a vote. And since Brady’s role as an owner of the Raiders makes him an owner of NFL Media makes him a voter “from AP or NFL Media.” So they’ve already ignored their own longstanding policy.
Moving forward, our first guess is that Brady will quietly and discreetly be omitted from the 2025 voting pool. Our second guess is that NFL Media won’t be included. And our third guess is that, in time, the NFL will create its own in-house voting apparatus for the official NFL awards that are handed out at a prime-time TV show that fewer and fewer people are watching. Especially since the NFL would avoid paying whatever it currently pays to the AP to harvest and tabulate the votes.
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