i'm pretty appalled that no one has brought up the point that there are literally
almost zero other offensive rookies worth considering.
only two other players even earned votes. mike williams (TB WR) earned 4 votes and maurkice pouncey (the guy everyone was worried would play or not tomorrow) earned 2 votes.
looking at the RBs, mathews was injured and sucked most of the year, spiller was injured and never started, and i think best played with turf toe most of the year. he never eclipsed 80 yards rushing or 20 carries in a game and his only notable game was the philly game in week 2, where he scored a 75 yard receiving touchdown (9 catches, 154 yards total) and ran for 78 yards and 2 TDs on 17 carries. he only scored one TD the rest of the season.
none of the other QBs started the majority of their games.
dez bryant wasn't really a focal point of the cowboys passing attack all year, and he was injured for the final quarter of the year.
demaryius thomas was also injured and didn't play in 7 games.
honestly you could just look at the 2010 draft and see that there really were very few offensive skill players taken in the early rounds. a pretty weak draft in that regard.
mike williams put up some nice statistics (65 catches, 964 yards, 11 TDs) but if we are looking at him in the grander scheme of all WRs, he was probably mediocre at best and benefited from being a good QB's only decent option. on football outsiders, you can see that josh freeman ranks 9th among all quarterbacks in both DYAR and DVOA. traditional statistics also show that freeman had a great year. williams, on the other hand, had a negative DVOA and only caught 50% of his pass targets, which is not very good at all for a #1 receiver. i don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that mike williams is an average-to-decent receiver playing with a good-to-great quarterback. the rest of the receiving corp was pretty weak too.
i'm going to try not to homer about pouncey but i will say that losing him for the super bowl is a huge blow to our already below average-to-bad offensive line and could very well mean the difference between winning and losing the game. he made all the line calls, and that would have been very vital against the packers' 3-4 blitz schemes...honestly, i believe pouncey would be the offensive rookie MVP of the year, and i will probably be proven right in the super bowl, although doug legursky really isn't that bad of a replacement option...causing safeties with botched snaps notwithstanding.
pouncey was even voted into the pro bowl as the alternate behind nick mangold. i think it's very reasonable to say that pouncey was the best offensive rookie all year. part of that was pouncey panning out to be a good (and probably great, eventually) center, part of that being the rest of the class sucking ass.
but, of course, voting a center the offensive rookie of the year would have been a pretty unsexy selection, especially with the #1 draft pick being a quarterback that didn't totally suck this year.
as far as bradford goes, he did set NFL rookie records for completions and passing yards. yeah, he did it because he threw an extraordinary amount of times, but voters aren't going to ignore that kind of stuff when the rest of the rookie class is so
ridiculously weak and there is basically no serious competition for the award. it's pretty obvious that bradford didn't play very well for an NFL quarterback, but as far as rookies go, he played fairly well.
anyways, this bradford argument is getting really retarded now. i think everyone can agree that bradford will probably be at least a good QB a few years from now, and that he threw the ball way too many times, and his stats are inflated because of that. it should be pretty obvious that bradford was more of a caretaker/game manager than anything. it's not like he was posting 3 TD games every other week. come on guys. get real.
just because you like the guy and think he's going to be a great one (he very well could be) doesn't mean he fucking tore the league up his rookie year. he managed to be competent in a bad offense, and that in itself is an achievement. just because the rest of the offense is bad doesn't mean bradford is AMAZING OMGWTF for not putting up <insert massive draft bust here> numbers. he played well for a rookie, but below average for an NFL starter.
anyway it's starting to become more and more apparent that whoever Cant Ban THIS or whoever is probably trolling everyone and wasting everyone's time making logical arguments/raging because of him. but whatever, it keeps this thread alive, i guess.
finally, go steelers.
