Pat McAfee Suggests NFL Rename Super Bowl MVP in Honor of Tom Brady
By Liam McKeone
Tom Brady has done it. Again. The man with a seemingly infinite football lifespan enters yet another offseason as a Super Bowl champion, his seventh ring in 10 tries. Any and every adjective will be used in the coming months to describe the magnitude of his achievements. It will still be hard to capture.
On top of a seventh ring, Brady also walked away with another Super Bowl MVP title. It is his fifth such accomplishment; previously, Brady won that honor in Super Bowls 36, 38, 49, and 51. Only four other players have been named Super Bowl MVP more than once. Joe Montana is the closest player in NFL history to Brady with three Super Bowl MVP awards.
Brady will retire with more Super Bowl MVPs than anyone ever and will probably hold that record for a long time. Patrick Mahomes already has one under his belt at the ripe age of 25-years-old and will have ample opportunity to gain ground on Brady, but a lot would have to go right to come close to matching the man everyone recognizes as the greatest football player of all time.
With all that in mind, Pat McAfee suggested today that the NFL rename the Super Bowl MVP award in honor of Brady once he finally does hang up the cleats. Currently the award is named after former commissioner Pete Rozelle.
Whenever Brady's retirement does come, the honorifics will be plentiful. Nobody will wear No. 12 for the New England Patriots again, and winning this year's title probably solidifies his place in Tampa Bay's Ring of Honor too. He'll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Buildings and streets throughout the New England area will be named after him.
But renaming the Super Bowl MVP after him would certainly cement his name and legacy in the minds of everybody even remotely aware of the game of football forever. I imagine I am not the only person who learned just now that the Super Bowl MVP is technically in honor of Rozelle, so the NFL won't be losing much brand recognition if they did change the name.
There aren't many other options in this category, either. The Lombardi Trophy will never be renamed and even the most ardent of Brady supporters would eventually admit that renaming the actual Super Bowl trophy after him would be a bit too much. The regular-season MVP trophy does not have an official name, but Brady "only" won that twice and will be remembered more for his constant postseason dominance than regular-season excellence.
The Tom Brady Super Bowl MVP Trophy (presented by whichever sponsor is popular at the time) certainly has a ring to it.