2024 AFL Awards: Hits, Misses & What Could Have Been

Yesterday afternoon, I caused a bit of a ruckus in the Arena football community by sharing a leaked list of AFL Awards for the 2024 season, including MVP, OPOY, DPOY, Coach of the Year, All AFL 1st & 2nd Team and much more. In case you missed it, here it is again:

Before I dive too far into this, I would just like to point out the fact that this is dated as August 7th and we never it until it was leaked by a blogger on November 8th is a perfect ending to a chaotic 2024 AFL season. You could not script it any better if I tried.

I'm gonna lie, I never thought we'd see or hear anything about the All-AFL teams or any type of offensive player of the year, MVP or any of that stuff.

In fact, I had planned on writing a blog comparing and contrasting some of my thoughts from the season compared to what eventually would have been released (or so I thought). I jotted down some ideas on my Notes app, stored it away and forgot about it until this week.

Screenshot below of what I had typed out just a couple days before the date on the unreleased Press Release (peep the date & time stamp on the note -- August 4th!)

Now we can get into a debate about MVP, what awards I was hoping they would announce but didn't, but I'd be remiss if I didn't first point out that I did a pretty good job when comparing to the real thing, at least on Defense.

While I went 3/9 on Offense, I went 5/8 on Defense, which would have been 6/8 if they put they put their Defensive Player of the Year on the All-AFL First Team like logic would suggest (and probably would have been 7/9 if they included Kick Returner like I did, but I digress).

But let's dive into these awards:

MVP - QB Isaac Harker, Billings Outlaws

I think there are 3-4 players that could make a justified claim for MVP, with Harker being one of them. He looked like a classic AFL QB in Sed Bonner's offense, and just had such a great control over the game that not many QBs in the league had in 2024.

He was exceptional all year and really kicked it up a notch towards the end of the season, ultimately winning ArenaBowl MVP at the BrawlAtTheMall.

In my initial notes, I had put WR Darius Prince of the Albany Firebirds at MVP. He was extremely consistent throughout the season and just constantly found a way to get into open space and make life difficult for nearly every defense he faced. He ended up getting Offensive Player of the Year in the AFL release, which is a strong finish and not surprising to see a QB get MVP & a skill position player get OPOY. It is what it is at this point. I think you could make a case for Albany QB Jake Medlock as well, but Harker is the right choice when you look back on the season as a whole.

Coach of the Year - Cedric Walker, Billings Outlaws

Assistant Coach of the Year - Sherdrick Bonner, Billings Outlaws

Nailed it! This 2024 Billings team was so special and you could just see it in how they played the game from the very beginning of the season. Most teams in the league played with an 'evolved' version of an Arena football offense, but Billings just had that old school feel to it.

In a recent interview with Coach Walker, we talked about the classic feel this Outlaws offense had and he mentioned how they literally took plays from those late '90s Rattlers playbooks and put them on the field this year. All the credit in the world for how Coach Bonner orchestrated the offense throughout the year and an absolute masterclass in playcalling in the ArenaBowl.

Coach Walker deserves a ton of credit for taking a team filled with a lot of younger players and molding them into a championship caliber team. He built his team based on there being Ironman rules, but the league changed their stance on it a couple weeks into the season. Billings pivoted and just continued their winning ways and that all comes down to the coaching job by Coach Walker & his staff.

Mascot of the Year - Kool Kat (Nashville Kats)

Dang man. He's so freaking cool.

This one is a toss up, but realistically there were only a handful of mascots in the league this year -- so this quickly becomes a 4-5 horse race for this award.

• Kool Kat (NSH)

• Spike (ALB)

• Klaw (ORL)

• Apollo (WSH)

• Gunner (WTX) RIP

Not gonna make much of a pitch one way or another here, but more so was just looking for an excuse to post Kool Kat.

1st Team All AFL - Offense

This is where it gets VERY interesting and probably get into some debates in my Instagram comments section -- even MORE than my post on 11/8.

Absolute psycho behavior to organize the list in this order, but whatever

Starting at QB, I think you have a couple different options here but ultimately Harker is the right choice for all the reasons mentioned earlier.

At RB is where I start to raise my hand to interject. ALB RB Jake Molinich had a really good season, but just based on the eye test I think there were two clear options for 1st Team RB this past season -- Billings RB Hunter Swoboda & SW Kansas RB Vincent DiLeo. I gave the nod on my list to Swoboda because he was an absolute battering ram who played his role in the Outlaws offense to perfection and was a really, really great pass blocker for them when he didn't have the ball in his hands.

Vincent DiLeo on the other hand was putting in WORK in Dodge City, on both sides of the ball. He was statistically number one in rushing for the 2024 season and looked the part every time he touched the ball. If there was an Ironman of the Year award, he would have been a Top 2-3 contender across all positions.

At WR, I can confidently sign off on the 3 there. Darius Prince was a gamebreaker for Albany, Duane Brown went on a TEAR down the stretch including a 5 TD performance in the ArenaBowl, and arena/indoor football veteran Braxton Haley was Mr Reliable for the Kats all year. WR is a position where there is so much production that it can be difficult to pick a 'Top 3', especially in Arena ball. We'll touch on some others that had a case to be made later on.

For OL, hand up I'm not entirely sure how to 'grade' or fully determine who the best of the best are. You can see it in some games where some linemen are just locked in, but throughout the season it can be difficult to monitor and track.

I think Connor Davis was an underrated OL this past season and will only get better as he just re-signed with the Storm. I also think Jamezz Kimbrough should have broken through to the 1st Team, but you could argue that the biggest miss may be the fact that there are 2 Albany OL on the 1st Team and they still didn't select the best one.

Firebirds OL Sean Brown got scooped up for the UFL after a tremendous 2024 campaign and has a really great case of his own for that 1st Team nod.

Lastly, for Kicker I think there were several really great kickers in the AFL in 2024. Bailey Giffen, Dylan Barnas, Marc Orozco, Henry Nell - all absolute studs who contributed a ton to their teams in multiple ways.

I gave the nod to ORL K Dylan Barnas in the Off The Wall 1st Team because it seemed like he was hitting multiple deuces every single game for the Predators and he was able to flip the momentum of a lot of games. But I can't speak ill of the guy Bailey Giffen.

Giffen was cold blooded for the Billing Outlaws this year, and the GW winning deuce vs Albany in their regular season clash and the GW FG to send the Outlaws to the ArenaBowl are more than enough to warrant him in that number one spot.

1st Team All AFL - Defense

This is the point of the blog where you would say, "Damn Off The Wall knows ball!" because I kinda nailed the defense here, nbd.

First things first, how do you have DB Freddie McGee as the Defensive Player of the Year but not on the 1st Team Defense? An interception machine for the Liberty that is very deserving of the DPOY award, and should have been on the 1st Team as well. Big miss.

For the Defensive Linemen, I am in 100% agreement with this group. SWK DL Marquise Lawson-Greenwood & SAL DL Henry Kellogg are two players that simply did not get enough attention for what they brought to the table for their respective defenses. Lawson-Greenwood lived in the backfield and was constantly torturing QBs & blowing up running plays, while Kellogg was a demon in the pass rush -- racking up SEVEN sacks in a single game vs Washington this past season.

But in my opinion, the best linemen after Ironman rules were eliminated was NSH DL Ezekiel Rose this past season. That Nashville defense was a lot better than they got credit for all year and it all started with Rose and that pass rush.

For Linebackers, this is where it can get nuanced. For starters, I think no Vincent DiLeo is a big miss here. He had a ton of TFLs and was a great wall to wall defender for that SW Kansas Storm defense who kept them in a lot of games in 2024 while their offense got some things sorted out. I also think BIL LB Derrick Harvey has a legitimate case for breaking through to the 1st Team as well.

He is a prototypical WR/Jack LB hybrid and reminded me so much of Cory Fleming from the 90s & 2000s, especially with how he played defense and was able to step in front of passes and take them to the house on a Pick Six. I also think that Siasosi Finau & Rodrick Jarrett are great selections for the 1st Team, but it's tough when there is only 2 spots.

For the secondary, it should have been SAL DB Freddie McGee, BIL DB Cedric Thomas & SWK DB Michael Lawson. McGee & Lawson had magnets in their hands for interceptions and Cedric Thomas was as close to a shutdown corner as you can get in arena football with how physical he played and how he was able to just blanket WRs all year (must be a Cedric thing in Billings).

But you could also make a case for SWK DB Keon Clary, who made a quite an impact playing opposite of Lawson and stepped up when Lawson missed some time due to injury.

Misses

No Ironman of the Year Award

While I get why they didn't have this since they abandoned the Ironman rule very early in the season, there were still multiple players that played both ways throughout the year and would have been great nominees for the award if it were a thing:

• SWK RB/LB Vincent DiLeo

• BIL WR/LB Derrick Harvey

• ALB RB/LB Trevon Shorts

I'm sure there are others as well, but these are the ones that came to mind first.

The spirit of the Ironman would have been great to keep alive, even if the rules don't specifically dictate that it is mandatory per team. At least having the award given at the end of the year would be a nice tip of the cap to Arena football history.

Cases for other Wide Receivers

Given that there were only 6 spots between the 1st & 2nd Team All-AFL squads at WR, there are always going to be folks that get left out that you could argue should have been included:

• ORE/WTX/ALB WR Isiah Scott

  • The guy had 7 TDs in a single game and was dynamic no matter what team he was playing for. Definitely not his fault, but if he spends all season in one spot, he probably cracks one of these.

• WIC WR Aakiel Green

  • I think Green was really impacted by the lack of streaming for Wichita games in 2024. He was a consistent WR threat who benefitted from the Regulators offense finding its rhythm as the year progressed.

• SWK WR Da'Quan Bailey-Brown

  • This guy was shot out of a cannon every single time he was in high motion. He would have been First Team KR, but could make a case for making one of the All AFL teams at WR as well.

Not Posting The Awards At All

Like I said before, it's fitting that this is the AFL's last breath and perfectly caps off a chaotic 2024 campaign. The players deserve the recognition not only for their on the field performance but for their perseverance of the off the field shenanigans that they dealt with all throughout the year.

I'm optimistic that the AF1 will learn from these mistakes as well and be much better about this type of recognition moving forward, but ultimately time will tell.

Have any hot takes about any of the above? Who do you think should have been included on the All-AFL 1st or 2nd Teams? Think any of my points or jokes were dumb?

Share your thoughts with me on X!