FOXBORO \u2014 Five Patriots players and coaches are up for end-of-season NFL awards.<\/p>\n
Quarterback Drake Maye, a finalist for both Most Valuable Player and Offensive Player of the Year, headlines New England\u2019s list of AP awards candidates, which were announced Thursday.<\/p>\n
Wide receiver Stefon Diggs, who topped 1,000 receiving yards one season after suffering a torn ACL, is a finalist for Comeback Player of the Year. Running back TreVeyon Henderson is a finalist for Offensive Rookie of the Year after rushing for 911 yards and nine touchdowns with a 5.1 yards-per-carry average.<\/p>\n
On the coaching side, head coach Mike Vrabel is among the finalists for Coach of the Year \u2014 which he previously won in 2021 with the Tennessee Titans \u2014 and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is up for Assistant Coach of the Year after directing the NFL\u2019s second-highest-scoring offense.<\/p>\n
The five finalists (for six awards) were the most of any NFL team. The Seattle Seahawks ranked second with four: Jaxon Smith-Njigba (Offensive Player), Nick Emmanwori (Defensive Rookie), Mike Macdonald (Coach) and Klint Kubiak (Assistant Coach).<\/p>\n
Asked what New England\u2019s large number of major award finalists said about his team, Vrabel replied: \u201cI hope they all win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vrabel did take home an award from a separate organization Thursday, with the Pro Football Writers Association recognizing him as its Coach of the Year. The honor was well-deserved, veteran right tackle Morgan Moses said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to have to get on him about that, for sure,\u201d Moses joked. \u201cI think where we are right now speaks a lot, and it speaks volumes of not just (Vrabel), but this coaching staff that he put together, the players that he was able to get an offseason and bring together, and the young guys and bring them along the way. I\u2019ve said it before: Any time you\u2019ve got a coach that\u2019s played at a high level and coached at a high level and is able to bring that mentality to the football field, and kind of be one of us, that\u2019s the magic, man.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo obviously we take our hat off on everything he\u2019s done for us, but we\u2019ve got more work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The No. 2 seed Patriots will visit the top-seeded Denver Broncos this Sunday in the AFC Championship Game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOXBORO \u2014 Five Patriots players and coaches are up for end-of-season NFL awards. Quarterback Drake Maye, a finalist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[833,7,6441,838,1167,249,2326,2094,6,101699,19670,208,531,596],"class_list":["post-697056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-england-patriots","tag-drake-maye","tag-football","tag-josh-mcdaniels","tag-mike-vrabel","tag-new-england","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-newengland","tag-newenglandpatriots","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-awards-finalists","tag-nfl-awards","tag-patriots","tag-stefon-diggs","tag-treveyon-henderson"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115940453935618252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}