Chiefs' Tyrann Mathieu Tweets Real Talk About Not Putting Too Much Stock in What Pro Football Focus Says
By Sam Dunn
Tyrann Mathieu's life is going pretty well right now. He's a Super Bowl champion thanks to his Kansas City Chiefs' triumph over the 49ers in Miami earlier this month. But that doesn't mean he's getting all the individual love there is to get.
According to Pro Football Focus, the noted football analytics shop, the Honey Badger wasn't among the NFL's 101 best players in the 2019 season. But the most important thing here? It doesn't matter. And PFF ain't exactly infallible.
I do not take offense to not making PFF top 100 players. many of those guys are not better @ football than me & they damn sure can’t lead men to engineer confidence & Work Ethic.
— Tyrann Mathieu (@Mathieu_Era) February 17, 2020
First things first: who do you think the best player in football is? Lamar Jackson? Michael Thomas? Aaron Donald? Well, Pro Football Focus' special numerical formula maintains that in 2019, the single best player in the NFL was George Kittle.
Take from that what you will. In the meantime, it suddenly got a lot easier to undestand Mathieu's relative stoicism here. Why waste one's energy getting mad? No football fan is required to look upon PFF's list with any credibility whatsoever. Their formula is their formula. There's no grand unified theory of football.
1. George Kittle
— PFF (@PFF) February 8, 2020
7. Lamar Jackson
10. Cameron Heyward@PFF_Sam:https://t.co/MLbRgexDKR
Trying to break down every single NFL player's quality on a 0-100 scale is a perilous exercise. Fair play to anyone who wants to gather tons and tons of data and try to break it all down that way.
But if you think the extremely good George Kittle was the "best" player in football this past season, you're going to raise a few eyebrows. Kudos to Tyrann Mathieu for keeping a healthy perspective and not pitching a fit over this perceived slight.