By this I don’t mean the worst pick, the most mediocre performance by someone they gave the award to. I mean the player who, other than that amazing Super Bowl, was the most unimpressive player over the course of his career.
For your edification, a list of all Super Bowl MVPs:
This is easy. It’s Nick Foles and I don’t think there’s a serious argument for anyone else. Foles had that miraculous run, but has otherwise proven himself to not be an NFL caliber player.
I would agree, but Santonio Holmes had a seriously forgettable career except for that Super Bowl. He played 9 seasons; the most touchdowns he had in a season was 8, and he had only one season with over 1,000 yards receiving.
IMO, he’s a solid #2 on this list, behind Foles.
Malcolm Smith (2013) seems like he should be a contender. I don’t know how to analyze defensive stats very well, but his career seems fine, but not very “impressive.”
I was going to make the same suggestion.
I didn’t mind naming him MVP because he did really well in that game, and in that SB it felt like almost every Seahawk had a hand in the win. And in the previous game, the NFC Championship that Seattle won due to “the tip”, Richard Sherman seemed to get all the credit on that play while Malcom Smith was the guy who actually made the interception, and if he hadn’t that play would have just been an incompletion. So I liked that he got some recognition.
But really, he was an okay player totally overshadowed by the rest of that historically good defense, and after the SB he just went back into obscurity.
Nick Foles has a better career passer rating than Mark Rypien (SB XXVI, 1992).
Without looking, or thinking about it too much, I will say Joe Namath.
I am tempted to agree with this, as I have made the argument repeatedly that Namath is the most overrated player in the history of the NFL. He also shouldn’t have been the MVP of Super Bowl III; Matt Snell ran for 121 yards and scored the Jets only touchdown. Namath only got the award because of The Guarantee.
Larry Brown should probably be a contender; he picked off Neil O’Donnell twice in Super Bowl XXX and got a huge free agent contract from the Raiders as a result. He promptly did jack squat for them and was out of the league three years later.
Passer ratings have been increasing over the course of NFL: history. I don’t know why exactly - it’s just how the game is played now - but quarterbacks are FAR more efficient at completing passes, avoiding interceptions, etc. That has been going on for as long as I’ve bene alive. If you look at the great QBs of the 60s and 70s their percentages look amazingly mediocre today. Joe Montana’s career passer rating was 92.3, which was terrific back then - and he led the league twice - but today would be average at best.
Even between Rypien and Foles’s career, quarterback completion percentage went up like seven percent (from about 56 to about 63), and the ratio of TDs to interceptions went from very close to even to closer to 2-to-1, so QB ratings soared So Foles’s numbers in context aren’t actually as good as Rypien’s.
He was my first thought.
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Although he didn’t win the MVP award, and thus doesn’t qualify, the prime example of a player who peaked in the Super Bowl is Timmy Smith, who ran for 204 yards on 22 carries for the Redskins in 1987, but otherwise only played 3 seasons, with 602 career rushing yards.
The OP seems odd to me, just because it’s the SB MVP. Say Gunner de Seamus, a QB who’s signed to the practice squad the week before, goes in for last play of game, down by three.
Tosses his first ever pass down the field for a touchdown and wins the game.
Clearly, Gunner is our GAME MVP.
Now he’s not the worst player to win the Super Bowl MVP, he’s just the player with zero stats to win the MVP.
I think passer ratings have gone up as a result of two different pressures: Much more emphasis nowadays on high percentage short passes, but also rule changes designed to help the passing game. (Pass interference is much more strict nowadays, can’t hit defenseless receivers, quarterbacks are much more protected, etc…)
Your Joe Montana example is a good one. The West Coast offense saw the introduction of the emphasis on high percentage short passes. Essentially screens and swings to the halfback in lieu of the running game. And his 92.3 passer rating was very good compared to his peers because of it. But you’re right that nowadays Montana’s passer rating would rank him 20th in the league this year, just barely ahead of Aaron Rodgers.
I agree with Malcolm Smith nomination above. The best indication of such is that, even to today, virtually no non-Seahawks fans know who Malcolm Smith is or would recognize him.
The writers who vote on the MVP are not going to give it to the backup who went 1/1 1 TD - it doesn’t give them enough story to write in their article.
Deion Branch and Doug Williams present strong cases. Branch played for a number of years, but never had even one thousand yard season and topped out at 6 TDs in a year in 2010.
As for Williams, he is a career sub-.500 passer (!) with nearly as many interceptions as TD passes.
I’ve heard the same thing - Joe Namath was overrated; he made the promise, won the Superbowl, then did nothing.
Just checked his stats from the Pro Football Reference page in the OP. He’s in the Hall of Fame. Granted, entry to the football HOF is much easier than the baseball HOF, whereas Jim Plunket, Phil Simms, Doug Williams, and Mark Rypien (as SB MVP QBs) are not. Pro Bowl 5 times; had a 4,000 yard season when that was a real accomplishment (the Bears have never had a QB with 4,000 yards in a season yet). Can’t put him as “worst player to win”.
Just because I don’t feel like doing real work, I’m looking at the list of winners. Came to Larry Brown of the Cowboys in Super Bowl XXX. We may have a winner here! From his Wikipedia entry,…
Played 5 years with the Cowboys and three years after. Not a long career, and an obvious bust after his SB MVP. Yeah, he was on 3 SB winning teams, but the Cowboys were beasts during his time with Aikman and Emmitt Smith.
Looking at Nick Foles’ stats. Yeah, at least Larry Brown was a starter for most of his career. Foles was mostly a backup. I think there’s a good debate here.
The least “household” or recognizable names on that list are all defensive players, and I’d pick one of them: Jake Scott, Larry Brown (who as a Steelers fan, I know all too well), Dexter Jackson or Malcom Smith. I don’t think that a QB would qualify, as any QB that won a SB would have had to lead his team all the way through the playoffs. That alone is a significant career achievement.
Eli Manning wouldn’t be able to sniff the HOF without those 2 historic SB runs, but he’s now considered a shoo-in.
Doug was actually the guy I had in mind when I started the thread, but upon reading the arguments I’d rank him as a better playuer than Nick Foles.
Again, once must consider the difference in QB standards when comparing a guy who played most of his games around 1979-1981 (with Tampa Bay, too) as opposed to a QB in the modern game. Williams was good enough to keep starting for the Bucs until he sat out because they wouldn’t pay him, and he got them to the playoffs. The year he sat out, Tampa Bay went 2-14, which would rather strongly suggest he was helping them.
He also became a starting QB at a time that the NFL… was not friendly to Black QBs. I mean, they didn’t think Warren Moon was good enough to play in the NFL.
I’ve been a Seahawks fan my whole life, I follow them carefully and know the roster well. I can’t even picture what Malcom Smith looks like.
I probably wouldn’t even remember his name if he wasn’t the MVP of Seattle’s only Super Bowl win to date.