Post-season award ballots

Good evening. It's Saturday night, Jan. 8. The third quarter of the Jets-Chargers game
has just wrapped up. Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson was announced at halftime of the game as a starter for the AFC Pro Bowl team. Right guard Willie Anderson and cornerback Tory James are backups.

Here are some postseason leftovers for you: I was asked to vote for the NFL Insider Player Awards and Playoff Predictions. Here are the links:

http://www.fantasyguru.com/1-5insider.html
http://www.fantasyguru.com/1-5insider2.html

For the second year, I was one of the official voters for the Associated Press awards.
There were 48 of us nationwide this year. Here were my votes:

Most Valuable Player: Peyton Manning

Comeback Player: T.J. Houshmandzadeh (I was his one vote.)

Defensive Rookie: Jonathan Vilma

Offensive Rookie: Ben Roethlisberger

Defensive Player: James Farrior

Offensive Player: Peyton Manning

Coach: Bill Cowher

As for e-mail letters, many have involved asking my opinion of Marvin Lewis' firing of
defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier. Good questions. Difficult answers. So many of you have written that I don't think I can dodge it.

Frazier is a good coach, and his contract was up. He was in a difficult situation to
begin with, working for a strong personality in Lewis, who also happened to be one of the
highest-profile coordinators of the past 30 years. Whether it was the right move or not, credit Lewis for his single-mindedness to win.

Lewis thinks another coordinator, presumably Chuck Bresnahan, will lift the performance of the
defense. Former Bengals coach Dick LeBeau had the opportunity to make changes after the 2000 season on the under-achieving staff he inherited from Bruce Coslet. He didn't, other than to demote Ken Anderson and hire Bob Bratkowski as offensive coordinator. LeBeau could have made changes on special teams and throughout the defense. He was blinded by loyalty.