Chris Simms concedes that Tom Brady is the favorite to win the 2021 NFL MVP.
However, the former NFL quarterback and current NBC analyst doesn't believe that Brady was the best quarterback that played in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 33-27 overtime win over the Buffalo Bills Sunday:
Despite trailing 24-3 at halftime, the Bills were able to push the defending Super Bowl Champions to overtime almost singlehandedly because of Allen.
Last year's NFL MVP runner-up, Allen finished the game with 308 passing yards, two touchdowns and one interception, along with 109 rushing yards and a touchdown scamper. As Pro Football Talk's Michael David Smith noted, Allen became just the third player in NFL history to throw for more than 300 yards and rush for over 100 yards in the same game.
Brady was hardly underwhelming in Week 14, as he tossed two touchdowns and racked up 363 yards through the air. The 44-year-old even had a 12-yard run of his own. Brady leads the NFL with 4,134 passing yards and 36 touchdowns in 2021. Brady is the odds-on favorite to win the NFL MVP. If he does win the award in 2021, Brady will become just the second player in NFL history to win the award four times, joining long-time nemesis Peyton Manning, who captured the league's top honor five times.
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But Sunday's game was a reminder that Allen is as physically talented as any quarterback in today's game. He has a laser arm, and has a pretty devastating mix of speed and power when he decides to tuck the ball and take off. That doesn't mean that Allen will end up with a legacy equivalent to Brady, but if you were going to build a perfect quarterback in a lab, he would have traits pretty similar to the ones that Allen possesses.
If anything, Sunday demonstrated a clear need to surround Allen with a supporting cast like what Brady has in Tampa Bay, so he doesn't need to be Superman every week. Or at least if he's going to have to be Superman, he should have enough talent around him to win close games like the one that the Bills lost Sunday.
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