The 13th annual NFL Honors was held on Thursday night in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl LVIII.
Several yearly awards were handed out to some of the league’s best players. However, former Super Bowl LV champion A.Q. Shipley was not impressed with most of the winners.
“The NFL, I think, missed on almost every award,” Shipley said on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “I mean how does M.C.D.C [Motor City Dan Campbell] not get this [Coach of the Year] award? … Detroit almost had to move the city to another country for years.”
Shipley has a point. Although Kevin Stefanski, who won the award after leading the Browns to the playoffs with four different starting quarterbacks, deserved to be recognized, Campbell has built something special with the Lions.
Just two years ago, Detroit went 3-13-1. In 2023, the team finished 12-5, won the NFC North and came up just three points short in the NFC Championship Game.
Shipley doesn’t think Coach of the Year was the only award the NFL messed up on either.
“The other award was Defensive Player of the Year,” Shipley added. “Assistant Coach of the Year. Mike Macdonald was pretty good, right?”
The Defensive Player of the Year outcome may be the most controversial of them all. Browns DE Myles Garrett won the award, but Steelers LB. T.J. Watt had more tackles (68), sacks (19), passes defensed (eight), interceptions (one), fumble recoveries (three) and touchdowns (one) than him in 2023.
Watt registered more sacks in the third quarter in Week 18 alone (two) than Garrett did in the final seven weeks of the season (one).
Lastly, Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz was named the Assistant Coach of the Year while Shipley believes Macdonald had a stronger case.
Both men led two of the best defenses in the NFL. The Browns allowed the fewest total yards per game (270.2) while the Ravens allowed the fewest points per game (16.5).
But the difference is Baltimore was the No. 1 seed in the AFC with a 13-4 record and won a playoff game and Cleveland went 11-6 and was one-and-done in the postseason. Macdonald was also named the Seattle Seahawks’ new head coach as a result.
It just so happens that Cleveland was the benefactor in all three awards and that’s not to say Stefanski, Garrett and Schwartz weren’t deserving. However, Shipley certainly makes a strong argument that the NFL got some of the yearly awards wrong and a lot of others would likely agree.