Antonio Brown is playing the best football of his career right now.
It seems we say that sentence several times during each season. But the numbers back that fact up. Brown has been extremely productive this year and is coming off another impressive performance during Sunday’s game against the Baltimore Ravens. In Pittsburgh’s 39-38 win, Brown registered 11 catches for 213 yards with no scores. It was the fourth straight game where Brown recorded at least 100 yards, and once again proved to be a valuable piece for a Steelers team that won the AFC North and clinched a spot in the playoffs with three games left to play.
There’s no question Brown has been in good form this year. But this hasn’t been the best year through his career.
Without a doubt, Brown’s best year came in 2014, where he recorded 129 receptions for 1,698 yards and 13 touchdowns across 16 games that year, and all those numbers remain as career-high marks for him. But the wide receiver is quickly reaching approaching those numbers. With three games left on the schedule in 2017, Brown has 99 catches for 1,509 yards and nine scores. He is just one catch and one score away from recording a fourth-straight season with at least 100 catches, 1,000 yards, and 10 TDs.
One would think those numbers are not good enough for an MVP, and there are other players who could definitively win the Award. Tom Brady, Carson Wentz, Drew Brees and Russell Wilson all have enough merits to win the MVP, and deservedly so. But one shouldn’t discount Brown on that race. The 29-year-old receiver is currently in the best form of his career, and the numbers back that up. He is also the best wideout in the league and the engine that keeps the Steelers’ offense going. Keep in mind that the Steelers’ offense also has players such as Ben Roethlisberger and Le’Veon Bell, so it’s not like Brown is the one reliable weapon in Pittsburgh. He has earned that right.
It remains to be seen whether Brown wins the MVP Award. Right now, he has only helped Pittsburgh to clean a playoff spot with three games to play while also leading the league in receiving yards by a wide margin. As mentioned above Brown has 1,509 aerial yards, while DeAndre Hopkins sits second with 1,233. That’s a sizable gap, and that’s not likely to be closed in the final three games of the season.
If being the best offensive weapon in one of the best teams in the league is not enough to win the MVP, then it’s not clear what a player needs to do to earn the Award. At the very least, Brown has done enough this year to merit consideration on the MVP race.