After Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco won the NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award over Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin in 2023, the Associated Press clarified the criteria for the award to ensure it went to a player who overcame illness or physical injury.
That clarification did little to prevent several voters from putting Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold on their ballots this year, even though his candidacy was exactly the kind they were attempting to prevent.
Darnold, who had been toiling as a backup in recent seasons, thrived with the Vikings this past season, throwing for 4,319 yards and 35 touchdowns while leading Minnesota into the playoffs. His 2024-2025 season is exactly the kind that would win the Comeback Player of the Year Award in recent years. Along with Flacco winning in 2023, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith won the award in 2022 after spending the previous year as a backup.
Following criticism that the award wasn’t focused on honoring those who had overcome extreme hardship or injury, the AP announced last offseason that “the spirit of the AP Comeback Player of the Year Award is to honor a player who has demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity by overcoming illness, physical injury, or other circumstances that led him to miss playing time the previous season.”
Guidelines are different from rules, and while the AP’s Rob Maaddi initially said during the season that Darnold wouldn’t be eligible, the AP eventually said that votes for him wouldn’t be rejected.
Even though Joe Burrow won the Comeback Player of the Year Award this year after recovering from a season-ending injury, several AP voters had Darnold on their ballot, with eight choosing him as their No. 1 pick.
ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio, who had Darnold No. 3 on his ballot, said that the “other circumstances” catch-all in the AP’s criteria clarification leaves the door open for this kind of situation. If the AP wants to clarify things further, it would likely need to remove that from now on.
“The easy fix would be to limit the award to players overcoming injury or illness,” wrote Florio. “Until that happens, ‘comeback’ will continue to be in the eye of the beholder. This year, 30 percent of the voters believed that Darnold’s comeback was good enough to be one of the five players receiving official votes for comeback player of the year.”