Priest Wasn't THAT Holy
The Chiefs picked up a much-needed first win of the season on Monday night against the Baltimore Ravens. KC's defenders shut down Jamal Lewis by swarming to the football, Trent Green had his best game of the season, and, as usual, #31 found the end zone:
Call me picky after an important 27-24 victory, but I can’t help but get annoyed when athletes are given awards they don’t deserve, no matter how insignificant the award may be. Chiefs’ running back Priest Holmes was named the AFC’s Offensive Player of the Week for Week 4 of the NFL season, even though he probably shouldn’t have been.
Just as outs are a baseball team’s currency, plays (and to a simpler extent drives) are the currency of a football team. Once they’re used up and all the time is off the clock, a team cannot score any more points. Although the number of plays a football team has to use during a game is never a definite number as outs are in baseball, it still serves NFL head coaches and players well to try to make the most out of the plays they know they do have.
Although other factors – not fumbling the football being one – play a role, what matters most when determining a player’s (in this case, a running back) value to his offense in a single game isn’t the number of yards the back gains, but rather who made the most of his opportunities. And although Holmes certainly wasn’t bad on Monday Night Football (125 yards on the ground), he simply wasn’t so impressive that he was the best offensive player last week. A 125-yard game is nice, but it isn’t as nice when the team had to use up 33 plays to gain those yards. Rudi Johnson, LaDanian Tomlinson, and Tiki Barber all put Holmes’ performance to shame. I think Holmes won the award because A) He’s Priest Holmes and B) People still think touchdowns scored (Holmes scored two) gauge who the best players are.