NFL Midseason Awards Announced
The NFL season rolls on Thursday night with the first Week 9 matchup with the 2-6 Browns taking on the 7-0 Bengals in the battle for Ohio. As teams pass or reach the midpoint in the season, NFL.com has pinned some midseason awards on the league’s top performers and began making predictions on end-of-year awards.
Several Denver Broncos can walk into the locker room this week and puff out their chests a little more as a result as they’ve grabbed some NFL midseason honors.
Check out the winners in the pages that follow…
Midseason All-Pro Team
Honorable mention to Brandon McManus who finished behind Justin Tucker of the Baltimore Ravens. McManus was the named to the quarter-season All-Pro team and has only missed one field goal all season. He’s 18-for-19 on the year having missed only a 50+ yard attempt. He’s also perfect on extra points, even with the longer distance this season
Honorable mention also goes to T.J. Ward who also claimed a quarter-season award. Ward has since surrendered his status to Reshad Jones.
Unlike McManus and Ward, DeMarcus Ware and Von Miller held court from their quarter-season awards and took home midseason All-Pro honors for edge rushers. Chris Wesseling, who composed the list, had this to say about Denver’s dynamic duo…
Cornerback Aqib Talib is generating surprising Defensive Player of the Year buzz (more on that below), but Miller and Ware are the focal point of Wade Phillips’ blitz-happy 3-4 scheme that gave Aaron Rodgers‘ the worst whupping of his career. Denver’s linebacker depth is incredible. Backup pass rushers Shaquil Barrett, Lerentee McCray and Shane Ray would start on many other teams.
I gave Ware the nod opposite Miller as a testament to the Broncos’ dominance, which could reach historical proportions by the end of the season…
Indeed, it has been a remarkable season so far for both Ware and Miller, even with Ware’s lingering back issues. The duo leads Denver’s defense, which ranks tops in yards per game, passing yards per game, points per game and sacks.
Miller was our No. 1 defensive playmaker in this week’s “Power Rankings” and Ware ranked No. 5 on our list. As we pointed out and Wesseling confirmed, there’s really no wrong answer when trying to identify Denver’s top playmakers on defense.
Defensive Player of the Year
In a separate post, NFL.com polled 18 different experts on their early prediction for MVP, Rookie of the Year and more. Two Denver Broncos featured in their predictions for Defensive Player of the Year, and surprisingly, the one getting the most attention was not on the midseason All-Pro list.
Von Miller, not surprisingly, was picked as a possible DPOY winner by Judy Battista. According to her, he is “The engine — and it runs fast — of the Broncos’ stellar defense.” But Miller didn’t receive the most acclaim from the group.
Four of the 18 experts polled selected cornerback Aqib Talib as their pick for Defensive Player of the Year. Only Charles Woodson received as many votes as Talib – edging out such names as Luke Keuchly, Clay Matthews, Josh Norman, and J.J. Watt.
Here’s what each experts voting for him had to say about Talib:
Jeffri Chadiha: Aqib Talib, CB, Denver Broncos. He’s been the most dynamic contributor to the league’s best defense.
Michael Silver: Talib. The “No Fly Zone” is the most daunting force in football right now, and this physical, prolific player is the chief air-traffic controller.
Steve Wyche: Talib. Almost went with teammate Chris Harris Jr. Talib is a superstar now on a defense that has to carry the team.
Adam Schein: Talib. Just beats out Josh Norman. Talib is a fantastic corner on the best defense in the NFL.
It’s somewhat surprising that Talib is getting so much love from these experts, but was only considered “noteworthy” by Wesseling. Full disclosure, however … we only had him ranked as our No. 6 defensive playmaker.
Coach of the Year
How phenomenal a job is Wade Phillips doing with this Denver defense? His unit is so dominant, so special, that he stole a Coach of the Year nomination despite not being a head coach. Dave Dameshek had to say about his “rogue” nomination:
Yes, I realize he’s not a head coach. Rules are made to be broken. Bruce Arians is, at worst, the second-best head coach right now, but Bum’s son deserves a tip of the ten-gallon hat for transforming the same pieces on the DEN D from very good to downright terrifying.
Take that Bill Belichick!
Takeaways
The real takeaways from all these honors? Chris Harris still isn’t getting the respect he deserves as one of the best cover corners in the league and Wade Phillips is going to need a lot more hard candy to pass out to this defense.