When Drew Brees walked to the sidelines after a scoring drive in last Sunday’s meaningless game with the Carolina Panthers, the home crowd chanted, “MVP! MVP!” Who dat say Saints fans don’t know an MVP when they see one?

Like the Heisman Trophy, the NFL’s MVP award for the 2006 season has all but been chiseled in stone for San Diego running back LaDainian Tomlinson. The consensus is wrong: The MVP for the 2006 season, by any common sense standard, is Brees.

First, some criticisms of the NFL’s MVP selection process. Major League Baseball recognizes that it is divided into two leagues; the NFL is too but refuses to acknowledge it, picking only one MVP for both the NFC and AFC. Second, baseball players, with the exception of the occasional DH, play on both offense and defense and hence are judged for their performance on both sides of the ball. Football players, with rare exception, are either offensive or defensive players; since offensive players have a huge advantage in any MVP reckoning, there should also be separate awards for defensive and offensive MVP (the AP does recognize the Defensive Player of the Year, but it’s not as distinguished).

Having said that, there’s no clear process for determining the single most valuable player. Practically all the meaningful stats accumulated by a pro football offense are attributed to a team’s quarterback and running backs. But even those numbers are in large part the result of teamwork — a team with better blockers is almost always going to pass and run better than its opponents, and there’s no real way of rating the blockers except by the performance of passers and runners.

In Tomlinson’s case, there’s no denying that he is a sensational player, and, in truth, there’s no compelling reason why he shouldn’t be the league’s MVP. He led the league with 1,815 yards rushing, had a handsome 5.2-yard average, caught 56 passes, and broke Paul Hornung’s seemingly unbreakable scoring record with 186 points (Although the sports world made much more out of the latter than was justified, as Tomlinson played a 16-game schedule and Hornung set his record in 12 games. After 12 games in 2006, Tomlinson had scored 156 points, 20 short of Hornung’s total.)

But was Tomlinson even the best running back in the league? Tiki Barber, playing for a much inferior Giants team, gained 1,662 yards for a 5.1-yard average and caught 58 passes. True, Barber ran for only five touchdowns, but there are those analysts, myself included, who believe that touchdowns in football are somewhat analogous to RBIs in baseball, which is to say they’re largely the result of the right players having the right opportunities. In other words, another great back whose stats were comparable to Tomlinson’s would probably, under the same circumstances, have scored as many touchdowns as Tomlinson. San Francisco’s unheralded Frank Gore, for instance, who gained 1,695 yards for a 7–9 49ers team, caught 61 passes, and actually had a higher yards per rush average, 5.4, than either Tomlinson or Barber.

Again, this is far from a knock on Tomlinson, but he does play for a San Diego team that was able to pretty much pick and choose its passing and running shots. Drew Brees, who never took a snap with the Saints before this year, was the heart and soul of a team that couldn’t possibly have won the NFC South without him. The Saints went 10–6 this season from 3–13 in 2005, and they didn’t do it on the basis of their rushing attack, which was 19th in the league in total yards rushing (1,761) and 26th in yards per rush (3.7). Tomlinson had plenty of help from quarterback Philip Rivers, who threw for 3,388 yards with a terrific 7.4 yards per pass average and 22 touchdowns.

But Brees’s numbers are pretty much a reflection of his own ability. He led the NFL in yards passing with 4,418 — 21 more than Peyton Manning, who leads a far more experienced offense than Brees. Manning ‘s interception percentage was slightly lower, 1.6% to Brees’ 2.0%, but in the most important of football passing stats, yards per throw, Brees was slightly ahead of Manning, 7.98 to 7.89.

In a fair world, Brees would be NFC player of the year and Tomlinson and Manning would be vying for the AFC trophy. Since there’s only one to give out, Drew Brees is the most valuable player in the NFL for the 2006 season.

Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”