Better MVP Voting System

[Alphadawg7]

DISCLAIMER:  THIS IS NOT A THREAD TO DEBATE THE MVP AND WHO IT SHOULD BE.  It is about is there a better way to conduct voting than just one vote at the end of the year.

 

MVP voting is entirely too reliant on RECENCY BIAS and also heavily favors QB's.  Games down the stretch too strongly sway votes.  Not saying there isn't extra value in coming up big in say big games late in the season, because there is, but its too skewed to right now where voting is too impacted by the most recent games.

 

For example - Lamar is the clear front runner to win because him and the Ravens had their 2 best games down the stretch beating the Niners and Miami (1 seed NFC and then 2 seed AFC) decisively in back to back weeks.  They got hot at the right time, especially to help Lamar's MVP case even though the rest of the season wasn't as good as he was in those 2 games.  

 

On the flip side, Lamars big 2 weeks started against both Purdy and McCaffrey who had their own MVP cases but both are completely out of the race even though you can make a case that both Purdy and McCaffrey had better seasons than Lamar.  Had this game took place say week 3, then Purdy and CMC might very well be in the thick of the race as would potentially other players considering Lamars overall season wasn't as good as his final 2 games played.  

 

So here is what I think would be a better way to do this:  Season long MVP voting or scoring system

 

Rather than have voters wait until the season ends to vote where the only thing fresh in their minds are the most recent showings, they should award points to candidates as the season progresses.  I have 2 different ideas on how to do this...one pretty simple and straight forward, and one little more complex and interesting.  

 

First and simplest one:  Vote for MVP every week starting after week 4.  

• Only the players receiving top 10 votes receiver points
• Each player receiving votes will recieve points based on that vote.  First place votes are worth 10, amount, 2nd place 9, and so on.  
• Recognizing that late season games often are more important, have more at stake, more pressure etc as teams jockey for playoffs and seeding, you can weight the scoring on those weeks a little higher.
  • Starting week 15 votes carry increased value - say something from 125% to 150% scoring value.  
  • Alternate - Maybe only the last vote carries more value say double points (200%)
• All votes remain sealed until the end of the season, so no one knows where the votes are to avoid influencing late season voting.  
• Player who accumulates the most points from the voting process by season end will be MVP.  
  • In the event of a tie then CO-MVP's or let the NFL players vote amongst the tied players and person with most votes wins.
  • NOTE:  If you still want some additional weight or value for late season votes where maybe the games are bigger and more important

 

Second one:  Season long scoring system where you score the players every 3 weeks (6 times).

• Each voter lists their top 10 players of that 3 week period who were at an MVP level.  
• They then score each player based on their performances.  This would probably include some fixed scoring and opinion based scoring
  • Fixed scoring examples:
    • Win = 1 point, 0 points for a loss, .5 points for big game in a losing effort
  • Opinion scoring example:
    • MVP Score per game - 0.0 to 3.0 based on how you feel they played each game.  Huge game maybe its a 2.9 or 3.0.  Slow first half but big second half maybe its 2.2.  Maybe that second half included some critical game winning play and that gets bumped up to a 2.4 or 2.6 for example. 
  • You can make the scoring as simple as this or as complex as you want with lots of scoring categories.  But at the end of the day, what really matters is that there is a season long tally that will help determine who had the best season and should be the MVP of the league.  
• Again, these scores remain sealed until the end of the season so voters don't feel compelled to try and sway voting in any one period.
• At the end of the season, the players finish the MVP race based on total scoring.  
• In the event of a tie, you the NFL players vote on the tied finalist with most votes being MVP or you could simply have Co-MVPs in a tie as well.

 

Personally, this would be better than just asking a bunch of voters to vote once the season is over where recency bias weighs to heavy.  Plus, with a fair scoring system, this might actually give players OTHER than QB's a better chance to win MVP.  

Edited January 10 by Alphadawg7

[mykidsdad]

I don't even know what the currently system is. Is it like 50 writers decide? Or is it something else? I just hope it is people who watch tape and don't just live in the echo chamber the national media creates. Josh should get the MVP. No QB means more to his team or his town. If smart people grind the tape, I'm confident they'll see it my way.

[K D]

Who cares about the regular season. Superbowl MVP is what matters

[ToGoGo]

1 hour ago, mykidsdad said:

I don't even know what the currently system is. Is it like 50 writers decide? Or is it something else? I just hope it is people who watch tape and don't just live in the echo chamber the national media creates. Josh should get the MVP. No QB means more to his team or his town. If smart people grind the tape, I'm confident they'll see it my way.

It’s 50 people in an echo chamber. 

[wagon127]

The need to have a separate, best QB award, and non-QB MVP award. 

[Wizard]

Have 3 voting groups with a cumulative score.

 

The 50 or so writers vote every week after week 4.  5 points for 1st and so on through 5th place.

 

GM's get 4 votes, after week 4, 8, 12, and 16. GM's vote for top 10 mvp candidates. #1-#3 get 10 points. #4-#6 get 7 points. #7-#10 get 5 points.

 

Players vote 4 times. Week 5, 10, 15, and end of regular season. 3 active players from each team are randomly chosen by a Random Sample Generator to be voters for that year.

 

They list their top 5 on the 4 occasions with 5th place getting one point and 1st receiving 5 points.

[MJS]

Keep it the same. I don't have a problem with it.

[djp14150]

8 hours ago, Alphadawg7 said:

DISCLAIMER:  THIS IS NOT A THREAD TO DEBATE THE MVP AND WHO IT SHOULD BE.  It is about is there a better way to conduct voting than just one vote at the end of the year.

 

MVP voting is entirely too reliant on RECENCY BIAS and also heavily favors QB's.  Games down the stretch too strongly sway votes.  Not saying there isn't extra value in coming up big in say big games late in the season, because there is, but its too skewed to right now where voting is too impacted by the most recent games.

 

For example - Lamar is the clear front runner to win because him and the Ravens had their 2 best games down the stretch beating the Niners and Miami (1 seed NFC and then 2 seed AFC) decisively in back to back weeks.  They got hot at the right time, especially to help Lamar's MVP case even though the rest of the season wasn't as good as he was in those 2 games.  

 

On the flip side, Lamars big 2 weeks started against both Purdy and McCaffrey who had their own MVP cases but both are completely out of the race even though you can make a case that both Purdy and McCaffrey had better seasons than Lamar.  Had this game took place say week 3, then Purdy and CMC might very well be in the thick of the race as would potentially other players considering Lamars overall season wasn't as good as his final 2 games played.  

 

So here is what I think would be a better way to do this:  Season long MVP voting or scoring system

 

Rather than have voters wait until the season ends to vote where the only thing fresh in their minds are the most recent showings, they should award points to candidates as the season progresses.  I have 2 different ideas on how to do this...one pretty simple and straight forward, and one little more complex and interesting.  

 

First and simplest one:  Vote for MVP every week starting after week 4.  

• Only the players receiving top 10 votes receiver points
• Each player receiving votes will recieve points based on that vote.  First place votes are worth 10, amount, 2nd place 9, and so on.  
• Recognizing that late season games often are more important, have more at stake, more pressure etc as teams jockey for playoffs and seeding, you can weight the scoring on those weeks a little higher.
  • Starting week 15 votes carry increased value - say something from 125% to 150% scoring value.  
  • Alternate - Maybe only the last vote carries more value say double points (200%)
• All votes remain sealed until the end of the season, so no one knows where the votes are to avoid influencing late season voting.  
• Player who accumulates the most points from the voting process by season end will be MVP.  
  • In the event of a tie then CO-MVP's or let the NFL players vote amongst the tied players and person with most votes wins.
  • NOTE:  If you still want some additional weight or value for late season votes where maybe the games are bigger and more important

 

Second one:  Season long scoring system where you score the players every 3 weeks (6 times).

• Each voter lists their top 10 players of that 3 week period who were at an MVP level.  
• They then score each player based on their performances.  This would probably include some fixed scoring and opinion based scoring
  • Fixed scoring examples:
    • Win = 1 point, 0 points for a loss, .5 points for big game in a losing effort
  • Opinion scoring example:
    • MVP Score per game - 0.0 to 3.0 based on how you feel they played each game.  Huge game maybe its a 2.9 or 3.0.  Slow first half but big second half maybe its 2.2.  Maybe that second half included some critical game winning play and that gets bumped up to a 2.4 or 2.6 for example. 
  • You can make the scoring as simple as this or as complex as you want with lots of scoring categories.  But at the end of the day, what really matters is that there is a season long tally that will help determine who had the best season and should be the MVP of the league.  
• Again, these scores remain sealed until the end of the season so voters don't feel compelled to try and sway voting in any one period.
• At the end of the season, the players finish the MVP race based on total scoring.  
• In the event of a tie, you the NFL players vote on the tied finalist with most votes being MVP or you could simply have Co-MVPs in a tie as well.

 

Personally, this would be better than just asking a bunch of voters to vote once the season is over where recency bias weighs to heavy.  Plus, with a fair scoring system, this might actually give players OTHER than QB's a better chance to win MVP.  

Weekly voting will create new biases.

 

early voting will be on reputation and not following early games too closely like with an upstart team going 3-$ or 4-2 than 1-5 and thrn this team ne comes this seasons new playoff team.  Since thry voted early ignoring thst teams star pkayer, thr voting differential can’t make up the deficit over the rest of the season. A vote at the end of the year this players wins easily.

 

I think voters are one voter out of each teams press pool then the rest are national level reporters.

Edited January 11 by djp14150