AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year, an award the Associated Press hands out each season, sets an oddly modest bar. A winner does not need to dominate a box score. By the award's own description, it typically goes to a player who overcomes the worst adversity. The reward is simply the chance to play even a single snap of NFL football again. That could mean missing the previous season entirely, fighting through a serious injury, or simply following a bad year with a good one. What counts as the worst adversity, though, has never been nailed down, and the definition itself has moved over time. Three threads run through this story. Who casts the votes, why the winning standard keeps shifting, and why the award's history includes a gap of decades.

• 2. A Vote, Not a Formula

  ›

  A nationwide panel of media personnel casts the votes that decide the winner each year. The panel spreads that decision well beyond any single city's press corps. Since 2011, the announcement has taken place at NFL Honors, a ceremony held in the days leading up to the Super Bowl.

  Starting with the 2024 season, the AP rewrote the standard behind the trophy. The new wording targets a player coming back from "illness, physical injury, or other circumstances that led him to miss playing time the previous season." That phrasing moves away from an older, looser standard built around resurgent performances rather than genuine absence from the field. In the AP's own blunter phrasing, the old approach amounted to a player simply "coming back from sucking." That tightened language followed a much older, hazier history for the award, one that started decades earlier and then went quiet for a long stretch.

• 3. A Long Interruption

  ›

  Between 1963 and 1966, the AP recognized a comeback player of the year for four separate seasons. Each year, it named one winner from the NFL and another from the rival AFL. Over those four seasons, the NFL's honorees included Baltimore kicker Jim Martin and Baltimore running back Lenny Moore. San Francisco quarterback John Brodie and Los Angeles Rams running back Dick Bass rounded out the NFL side. The AFL side of the award went to San Diego running back Paul Lowe twice. Kansas City running back Abner Haynes and Boston quarterback Babe Parilli also won it once each.

  According to the record, these four honorees from 1963 through 1966 are typically left out of the award's official list of winners. The AP did not hand out the prize again until the 1998 season. Buffalo quarterback Doug Flutie's name opens the modern list, which runs from the 1998 season through 2025 without a gap. That unbroken modern run stretches across more than two decades, but only two names on it show up twice.

• 4. The Only Repeat Winners

  ›

  Since the AFL-NFL merger, only two players have won the award more than once: quarterbacks Chad Pennington and Joe Burrow. Pennington took the honor in 2006 as a member of the New York Jets, then again in 2008 after joining the Miami Dolphins. Burrow won in 2021 and again in 2024, both times with the Cincinnati Bengals.

  Quarterbacks Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Alex Smith all appear once on the modern list. So do tight end Rob Gronkowski, safety Eric Berry, and running back Christian McCaffrey. Wide receivers Jordy Nelson, Keenan Allen, and Steve Smith Sr. also won the award once each. Christian McCaffrey's win closes out the list as it stands through the 2025 season. It is the most recent name in a roster that grows by only one entry each year at NFL Honors.