FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Today, the Associated Press named Tom Brady the National Football League's Most Valuable Player for the 2010 season. It is the second MVP honor of Brady's career. He earned his first MVP honors following the 2007 season.
He is the first unanimous selection. It also marks the fourth time in team history that a Patriots player has earned league MVP honors. Two former Boston Patriots AFL greats earned league MVP honors in the 1960s. Gino Cappelletti was the first to claim the honor in 1964, the year he broke his own team record by scoring an AFL record 155 total points. Forty-six seasons later, that franchise scoring record still stands. In 1966, Patriots running back Jim Nance rushed for a franchise record 1,458 yards to earn league MVP honors, a team record that lasted for 29 seasons.
Brady finished the season with 3,900 passing yards and led the NFL with 36 touchdown passes and only four interceptions. Brady finished the regular-season with a streak of 335 straight pass attempts without an interception to set an NFL record. He went 11 straight starts without an interception. That is the most consecutive starts without an interception in the NFL since the 1970 merger. Brady threw just four interceptions on 492 pass attempts for a 0.81 interception percentage. That mark is the third best in NFL history and the best among all quarterbacks in league history who had at least 250 pass attempts in their low-interception season.
Brady led the NFL in 2010 with a 111.0 passer rating, the second time in his career that he finished the season with a passer rating over 100. The 111.0 passer rating is the fifth best all-time.
Brady also set an NFL record by throwing at least two touchdowns without an interception in each of the final nine games of the year. Brady passed Don Meredith's previous record of six straight games with two or more touchdowns and no interceptions (1965-66).
[
]()Brady had at least one touchdown in all 16 regular-season games. Since the NFL went to a 16-game season in 1978, only six quarterbacks have thrown for at least one touchdown in each game.
Brady was named the AFC Offensive Player of the Week in back-to-back performances in the wins at Detroit (11/25) and vs. the New York Jets (12/6). Brady has now received the honor 17 times, the third-most Player of the Week awards by a player since the accolade was instituted in 1984.
In the Lions game, Brady finished with a perfect rating after going 21-of-27 for 341 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions for a 158.3 rating. It was the second time in his career that he finished with a perfect rating. He is the third player ever to have more than one game with a perfect rating (minimum of 20 attempts), joining Peyton Manning (3) and Kurt Warner (3).
In the Jets game, Brady finished with 326 yards passing and four touchdowns. It was his 8th game with 300 yards and 4 touchdown passes, the most such games by a quarterback since the 1970 NFL merger.
