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Dan Graziano's MVP Watch

A three-touchdown performance Sunday vaulted Andrew Luck into the MVP conversation. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

The Watch was watching, of course, because what else would a Watch do? Sunday night's Incident in Indianapolis was pure, sweet MVP Watch gold, with the previously unchallenged front-runner getting schooled by a scruffy successor in the place he himself put on the map.

Andrew Luck this year has now beaten the Broncos, Seahawks and 49ers -- teams that have combined to lose exactly one other game besides those three. And as the clock ticked down at Lucas Oil Stadium and the realization set in that the man who has occupied the top spot on this list since the preseason would no longer be undefeated, the Watch turned into the Wonder.

Might it be that Luck actually deserves the top spot? He has two losses, sure, where others on the list have only one. But as mentioned, some of those guys' one is to Luck's Colts. He played a better game Sunday than Peyton Manning did, especially if you factor in steadiness and consistency from start to finish. He didn't have the "Star Wars numbers" Jim Irsay disdains in ungrateful retrospect, but he was much more in command of things than his predecessor was, and in the end he did win the game.

So what is a Watch to do? Keep Manning where he was, on the premise that one loss isn't nearly enough to wipe out a lead the size he'd built? Move Luck from off the list in Week 7 to the top of it in Week 8? Very curious. Very mysterious. Very ... aw, who's kidding whom here? You've already looked. Nobody reads this part. The Watch could give you the winning lottery numbers in this paragraph and all of the millions would roll over into next week. On with it, then. Fire up your inexplicable outrage, you impatient, destitute, list-addicted lemmings!

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