NFL Honors: Hall of Fame inductees, 2015 awards announced

Tharold Simon broke up a pass. Earl Thomas wanted a little dap from the ref, but didn’t get it:

Got the back slap, though. We’re cool.

There weren’t many surprises from Saturday night’s NFL awards show, NFL Honors. The voting breakdown for the MVP award, ultimately won by Aaron Rodgers, raised a few eyebrows when Seattle Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner received a vote from former NFL head coach and current NBC yakker Tony Dungy.

Dungy explained his unusual pick Sunday morning.

The 2015 NFL Honors Awards Show is in the books, with a new set of players taking home the most prestigious awards of the NFL season and a new class for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. This is the fourth year they’ve went with the NFL Honors show format and it’s proving to be very popular -- though all of the announcements come out prior to it actually airing, as media tweets from the taping of the show an hour before.

Whatever the case, we’ve got a full recap of the winners below:

Watt is a prolific defensive end who is as effective as anybody in doing the things expected of a defensive end, but then he does all this other stuff on top of that. Outside of game-sealing interceptions and things of that nature, it’s often hard to pin wins specifically on one defensive player, but Watt certainly won the Texans plenty of games himself.

Still, it’s not surprising to see Rodgers walk away with the award. He finished the season with a quarterback rating of 112.2, the eighth-highest rating since the merger, and completed 65.6 percent of his passes for 4,381 yards. He put up 38 touchdowns, and while none of the numbers mentioned thus far are league highs (second in passer rating, third in touchdowns and seventh in yardage), Rodgers had just five interceptions on the season.

In other words, the award goes to a player who had a great year after doing nothing the previous year. That’s why it’s not surprising that Gronkowski came away with this award. He is he one of the most prolific tight ends in the league, and the Patriots offense is better when he’s on the field.

Gronkowski definitely deserves it, though. He played in 15 games this season, catching 82 passes for 1,124 yards and 12 touchdowns. He was an excellent blocker and he was always Tom Brady’s safety net. The offense was much smoother with him out there, helping New England to the No. 1 seed in the AFC.

Watt certainly did enough this season to state his case as the most outstanding defensive player in the league. Many even argued he was the best player in the league, period. Not only did he finish second in the NFL in the sack race, first in fumble recoveries and third in forced fumbles, but Watt also had an interception and multiple touchdowns on the offensive side of the ball. Some may view Watt coming in on offense as something of a gimmick, but he managed to put up three touchdowns on that side of the ball, in addition to two defensive touchdowns and a safety.

That’s 32 points Watt accounted for on his own, not counting extra points. For the season, he tied a career high with 20.5 sacks to go along with the 78 total tackles and 10 passes defensed. He does everything that is expected of an NFL defensive end -- and more -- and he’s done it at a high level.

Donald, who was selected in the first round of the 2014 draft, wasn’t even in the starting lineup until October. After that, he made his presence known in every game and progressed at a high-level rate. He rushed the passer very well from the inside and was a stout run defender. Not only was he good, but he made the guys around him better, and that freed up defensive coordinator Gregg Williams to get more creative on that side of the ball.

Donald managed to put up nine sacks, second-most on the team behind All-Pro defensive end Robert Quinn. The Rams’ defensive line was already considered one of the best in the league before the season and Donald stood out a head above the rest, and that’s with teams game-planning to slow him down as the season went along. Donald wasn’t just the best rookie defensive tackle or the best rookie defensive lineman, he was arguably the top defensive tackle in the league. In fact, Pro Football Focus graded him as the top defensive tackle in the 2014 season.

Bettis always had the raw numbers to make it, but many questioned his chances given that he was never really considered the “best” running back in the league at any point during his playing days. But he put up eight seasons of 1,000-plus yards, which at the time of his retirement was the third-best in NFL history. He’s fifth all-time in career rushing yards with 13,662.

Brown has been a finalist multiple times, but the sheer number of successful wide receivers in recent years has made it awfully tough for them to make it into the Hall of Fame. Brown had more than 1,000 catches when he retired, and primarily with bad quarterbacks, which says a lot more about his success. At the time of his retirement, he had the second-most receiving yards in NFL history.

Arians was a strong candidate for the award last year after leading the Cardinals to a 10-6 mark, but ultimately fell short to Ron Rivera of the Panthers. Arians is only the 11th coach to ever win the award twice, which has been given out since 1957. The record is held by Don Shula, who took home the hardware four times.

Beckham was definitely a friend of the stat sheet, but he won this award for so much more than the numbers. Beckham made spectacular catch after spectacular catch all season long, and was as reliable a target as there is in the league in big situations. It truthfully did not matter who was covering him because he was always a threat to bring down something ridiculous.

The fact that Beckham was such a shoe-in for this category is all the more impressive given that he only played in 12 games this season. He dealt with injuries for the first few weeks of the year, yet still managed to come out and catch 91 passes for 1,305 yards with 12 touchdowns, while making arguably the best play of the year:

The NFL will announce its annual award winners during the NFL Honors ceremony Saturday night at 9 p.m. ET. The event will be televised on NBC and can be streamed online on NFL Now. The league will be handing out awards for Offensive Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and NFL MVP, among others.

Other notable honors that will be handed out Saturday night include the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, the GMC Never Say Never Moment of the Year and the Bridgestone Performance Play of the Year.

A number of trophies will be handed out to the top performers in the NFL on Saturday night. Seven of the awards will be presented by the Associated Press: the Most Valuable Player, Offensive Player of Year, Defensive Player of Year, Offensive Rookie of Year, Defensive Rookie of Year, Comeback Player of Year and Coach of the Year. All 50 AP voters submitted their ballots before the start of the postseason, meaning any playoff performance -- good or bad -- will not be factored into the voting.

With so many close races surrounding this year’s awards, let’s take a closer look at the key contenders for the major honors.