The State of Sports Nov. 16th

-NFL Football

-Comeback player of the year?
I was intrigued on Sunday to see a poll on ESPN.com that stated:
"Who is the MVP of the second half?" The responses were:
Payton Manning, Ladamian Tomlinson, Shaun Alexander, Steve Smith, or someone else.

Now, given these facts we can obviously say that Manning could be an MVP, although he's not having the kind of year he had last year. Tomlinson is a great player, but he and Brees have been splitting the job of running an offense (you also have to remember that he got stopped vs. Philly, and totally took him out of the game). And Alexander is the MVP of the midseason. Fact is he leads the league in rushing yards and touchdowns. He hasn’t been stopped all season. He is also a major factor in why the Seahawks are 7-2, right now.

Steve Smith on the other hand...he is having a very good year. You look at the Panthers receivers, and the first thing you see is that Smith has 937 passing yards, and 9 touchdowns. Wow. That’s the kind of thing you see at the end of a season. The next nearest is the backup running back Deshaun Foster, who has 255 yards and no TD's. My question to you is why Steve Smith was 4th on the votes list with 18% of the poll votes, after roughly 100,000 people responded.

I think that the real MVP on this offense is Jake Delhomme. You look at his statistics last year. Without Smith he still spread the ball out to pass for 3880 yards and 29 touchdowns. He also did this without Steven Davis, their best running back. That is amazing. That’s why I think people are overlooking this, and why i'm not surprised.

If I was to say anything about Smith, I would have to give him the comeback player of the year award. He came back from an injury that was season ending. He has come back, and is now leading the league in receiving yards. He should really get a lot of comeback player of the year consideration.

Other candidates:
-Drew Bledsoe is one of consideration. He Dallas is 6-3 in the division, and could very well win it, but they still have the rest of the NFC East to go, and Denver, KC, and Carolina. Bledsoe has been very quiet, because his other receivers have been making noise. In an offense that orients itself with running the ball (IE-Jones this and last year, and Barber this year), Terry Glenn and Keyshawn Johnson are proving that receivers 30+ can still get the job done. The only thing that’s hurting Bledsoe is the fact he has 10 fumbles, and four have been lost. Ouch!

-Joey Galloway, from the other contender in the NFC South. Where would the Buccaneers be without the play of Galloway? Although the Carnell Williams stole the spotlight early in the season, down the stretch, the 95.8 receiving yards from Galloway has been key, especially since Brian Greise went down with an injury. Galloway is this year Mushin Muhammad. Someone thought this guy wouldn’t get the job done, and here he is, helping out stabilize an offense that needs help, this season.

-Id also give a possible consideration to Carson Palmer, Michael Strahan, and Thomas Jones. For a complete list of the AP comeback players of the year award since 1979, click here.