Are you sure you know what moving the goalposts means?
When the difference in win/loss record in equally bad divisions is only one game, it seems perfectly reasonable to add context by examining each player's supporting cast in order to quantify how much that one win really matters (a question that was explicitly asked, btw). The debate shifted to supporting arguments regarding what kind of value should be placed on 11-5 vs 10-6.
Now, if you want to debate whose supporting cast actually was worse, that's fine. I saw a lot of GB this year, and that roster outside of Rodgers, Nelson, Matthews, and perhaps Dix is not very good (Peppers is cooked). Their secondary has also been decimated by injuries. Atlanta I'm not as familiar with, so I will defer to others.
Cute line, though.
The conversation at that point could have been abbreviated to:
#218: Ryan had much better stats
#219: Not only that, Rodgers' poor play put them in a hole, and even though they clawed back, the team only went 10-6, I don't see how you can give it to him unless he blew the field away statistically
#221: But Ryan only had one more win!
#222: Yeah but he had worse pass protection and defense
Fairly or unfairly, the MVP voting often seems to heavily weight team record, as well as the QB's stats. Rodderick's point was that any argument for Rodgers can be predicated on
neither wins nor QB stats. It doesn't matter how many more wins the Falcons had than the Packers, just that because Rodgers was superlative by neither measure, voters don't have much of a leg to stand on to give it to him. So that reply was the first facepalm.
But then AB in #222 took the argument on a completely different tangent. Instead of arguing that other factors matter to voters, or arguing one of the other predicate points of the conversation to that point (e.g. QB stats), he basically points and says "look over there!" as if we're going to be distracted from the fact that there's no substantive argument against Rodderick's post. Nobody was talking about pass protection or defense, no columnist or talking-head that I've seen discuss the MVP subject has ever brought them up, and instead of making a case that they should matter, he cites them as if a one-liner reply was sufficient to refute the point. That's what brought my snark.
Now here we are with your reply that those factors add context. I'd first offer that Rodderick's whole point wasn't that the one-win-difference should matter a great deal, just that, because there was no advantage for Rodgers in team record (in fact, a disadvantage, however slight you consider it), you've got no real reason to overturn Ryan's presumptive win on the basis of much stronger passing stats. Secondly, if we were to correlate MVP vote share with defensive strength or pass protection, I think we'd find a
positive correlation, because those things contribute to a better team with more wins, more dominant wins, and voters like that stuff, rather than considering lack of them a handicap for a QB to overcome. Go back and look at the 2003 and 2004 debates, if you can find articles - my recollection is that people favored McNair and Manning because of things like yards and TDs, not that they discounted Brady because of his defense.
Lastly, I'm no expert on line play, but
FO claims to be. Their Adjusted Line Yards ranks GB slightly below average at 3.79 (#19) and ATL slightly above average at 4.09 (#10). In pass protection, GB ranks slightly above average at 5.5% (#11) and ATL slightly below average at 6.5% (#23). The teams are nearly identical in weighted defensive DVOA, which weights recent games more heavily (and ATL has improved recently while GB has regressed slightly). My read is that those factors are not a substantial difference in explaining their QBs' performance.
And I thought
@Marciano490 had the best line back in #208.