Eli Manning had two Super Bowl MVPs and deserved them just so he has more than Peyton.
Nick Foles wasn’t bad. He’s an example of someone who had an amazing performance in the Super Bowl that he never matched again. But he wasn’t a bad or even mediocre player who somehow earned MVP in an otherwise uneventful career. He was Carson Wentz’s backup in Philly in 2017, and became the starter in Week 14 when Wentz was injured and ended his season with an ACL tear. He then led the Eagles to wins over the Giants and Raiders as a starter, and sat out the last regular season game to ensure he wasn’t hurt before the playoffs.
He of course then led the Eagles to win over the Falcons in the divisional round, then a win over the Vikings in the NFC Championship, and then the SB win. He was undefeated as a starter once he took over for Wentz.
Compared to some of the other names mentioned in this thread, that doesn’t sound like a “bad player” at all.
It’s really too bad Jeff Hostetler didn’t win the Superbowl MVP because I always think of Foles as the Eagles’ Hostetler, and they would be a fun comparison to each other to see who had the more pedestrian career.
I think Eli might actually be a decent case study of how the rising tide of NFL passing standards and practices raises all boats. His better statistical years are later in his career when the Giants were terrible. I think what’s happening is that the Giants were just adapting to the changes in the modern passing game like all other teams, and Eli just adapted right along with them.
He won his two Superbowls in his first eight seasons. I would bet his last eight seasons would look like a different era quarterback compared to his first eight seasons. (Of course it’s probably not fair to include his Peyton-like rookie season.)
One reason for this was the Cover 2 scheme (both safeties play deep zones) which came to dominate all defenses. 50-60 years ago, the passing game was feast or famine: completion percentages around 50% but with a high average per catch (vs. per attempt) as a lot more of the passes went downfield in between a lot of running plays. The highest yards per catch active QB is Jameis Wilson, 12.5 good for 63rd all-time; all the top ones (6 over 15.0) are guys who retired 50 or more years ago. In any event the writing was on the wall when Bob Hayes (6th all time for WR w/ 20.0 YPC) forced teams to use zones in the 60’s; just took them a few decades to perfect.
I keep hoping someone will try the deep approach again at some point, because the Cover 2 isn’t completely invincible and isn’t active on all plays, and the game is more interesting when different teams try different approaches, but given how risk-averse coaches are (you either get the bomb or a 3-and-out with such an approach) now we likely will never see that ever again. It also can lead to more INTs.
That’s my point. Being a backup, pulling off the Philly Special, and winning the SB… Season? Doesn’t matter in this contest. What he or someone else did in the championship game before? Doesn’t matter.
It’s only what happens in the Super Bowl! That’s the SB MVP!
If the backup QB throws a Hail Mary for the winning score this year for any team, season stats aren’t a factor.
The kicker who’s blocked, gets the rebound and runs it in for the winning score is the SB MVP. Even he’s only punted once in his career. And of course that’s depending on whether or not there’s another winning player who had two or three TDs.
Foles may not have been the best MVP but he was most certainly not the worst, not by a long shot - based off of career achievements. There are plenty of nominees for the award of this thread that were worse than him.
Well, nominate them 
Rypien?
Take a look back at the OP.
Pro Football Reference has an Approximate Value stat, which is the best one I can think of for comparing players at different positions. It’s not explicitly capped, but it ranges from 0 for a non-player to the high teens for an All-Pro to the low 20s for an OMG season. This year’s leaders are Lamar at 21, Josh and Jayden at 20, and Penei at 19.
Anyway, the lowest career values for a Super Bowl MVP seem to be leading our discussion: Larry Brown at 34, Nick Foles at 37, and Malcolm Smith at 38. (Everyone else I checked was at least in the 60s.) I’d personally choose Brown due to Foles’s Pro Bowl and Smith’s relative longevity, but there’s no real wrong answer there.
Woo Hoo! Someone agrees with me!
You missed one: Desmond Howard, for the Packers in SB XXXI, with a career AV from PFR of 20 during an 11-season career.
Though he was a wide receiver, he never really broke through as a receiver – but, in '96, the Packers made him their primary punt returner (as well as one of their kickoff returners), and he had a massive year: three punt return touchdowns in the regular season, and both a punt return touchdown and a kickoff return touchdown in the playoffs (the latter during the Super Bowl).
He left the Packers after that season, bounced around for several teams (including a brief return to the Packers in 1999), but never replicated what he’d done in Green Bay in '96.
Good catch (no pun intended)! I still might have Smith worse than Howard just because Howard had that good year.
Desmond Howard was actually someone who came to mind for me, too. Although he did make an NCAA Football video game cover, I think.
He did win the Heisman Trophy in 1991, and was the 4th overall pick in the 1992 NFL draft. Up until his 1996 season with the Packers, he was generally seen as a draft bust: from 1992 through 1995 (three seasons with the Redskins, then one with the expansion Jaguars), he had 92 total pass receptions, and returned 34 punts.
I don’t understand the scale of the numbers in the second paragraph. Is it a different scale than the one you describe in the first quoted paragraph?
One season versus a whole career.