NFL.com has opened voting for the ROTY 2012 award. http://www.nfl.com/voting/rookies/2012/YEAR/0 I voted for Russel Wilson, with his 0-48 game against the Cardinals he showed what an amazing talent he is. Reaching the semi divisional round of the Play offs as the only rookie contributed to submit my vote to him.
People were calling for Wilson to be dropped for Flynn after a few weeks, award it based on the whole season, not who had a hot streak at the end. And look at the strength of the team around him before you use the "look how far he got" reason.
I did, I looked at what RG3 and Luck did. RG3 got injured twice and on both occasions kept playing resulting in doing more damage to his knee. And RG3 relied heavily on Morris. Luck was good but the amount of times he got sacked is just ridiculous. You can pin that on the O-line of the Colts, but half of the time he was slow to get rid of the ball or he just didn't feel the threat coming in. I judged Wilson on his win-streak, his capacities and the team. It's the full package I'm looking at, and all starts are rough for rookies, it took some time for RG3 to get in touch with his team, I still remember the Resdskins were 3-6 halfway the season. And at the start of the season, the Colts lost their home game against the jags 22-17. In hindsight, that's just painful.
Wilson only completed 7/13 passes in the Cards game. It was his game at Atlanta that was probably one of the best of the season in the entire league; pulled it out when it really mattered most. I said Luck, purely based on the options he has available to him (or lack thereof). By the way, is it supposed to be only offensive players?
He got injured twice but on the whole, had a far better season than Wilson did. He only missed one regular season game, and missed the end of a playoff game, that's not nearly enough missed time to rule him out on it. Sure, he got sacked a lot but why on earth can you not pin that on the o-line? He was the 4th most sacked player. But the FIRST by a long way in hits and hurries. If that doesn't show he's good at avoiding sacks then what do you want? Aaron Rodgers was sacked ten times more (again, despite being hit and hurried less) so does that mean he should be chastised because of it? I'll say this because it applies to all three of them, but I'll explain why individually - Do not judge players on the success of their team. There are 52 other players on the roster. Most of Griffin's losses at the start of the season were on his defence. He was playing very well from week 1. The 22-17 loss to Jaguars was a game that was set to be one of a ridiculous amounts of last-minute comeback drives from Andrew Luck. Do you know how Colts lost that game? A blown coverage from an aggressive safety call allowing a last second 80 yard touchdown. After Luck led a lightning drive to put Colts ahead. What was he supposed to do about that? Russell Wilson, on the other hand, had an incredibly well rounded roster around him. You pointed out the 48-0 game as an example (0 conceded? Yeah his defence can't have been helping much) and as Conor pointed out (who is a Seahawks fan), he went 7-13 in that game. Mhmm. You point out that Griffin relied on Morris - what did Wilson do with Lynch? Ohhh, right, the exact same thing. Except Lynch has been established as a brilliant running back, Morris was a 6th round rookie. And when you've got the threat of mobility as Griffin has, of course the running back is gonna find it easier. I'm not a fan of the pistol option offence because QBs get hit hard and often (as shown by Griffin's injury) but Griffin running it was masterful. I think Wilson had a good year. A very good end to the year. But he just isn't on the same level as Luck or Griffin.
Comparing offensive players to defensive players in a "which is better" competition is dodgy, so rookie of the year is split into two separate awards. But in fairness, OROY is the only one people really care about.
