• Peterson, Watt Named Offensive, Defensive Player Of The Year

    by
    Andy Freeland
    Published on 02-02-2013 08:43 PM
    4 Comments Comments

    Neither is a huge surprise. Adrian Peterson ran for 2097 yards, 2nd most in league history. J.J. Watt led the league with 20.5 sacks.

    The only question with Peterson was which award he would win, Offensive POY or MVP. And more to the point, what's the difference? I don't know that the AP (Associated Press, not Adrian Peterson) really gives guidelines to the voters. The Offensive POY is more or less the MVP runner up (except in the 3 cases where the MVP wasn't an offensive player). A lot of people, including Peterson himself, felt that he deserved the MVP. Possibly, but running backs only win the MVP when they have a ton of TDs (LaDainian Tomlinson in '06, Shaun Alexander in '05). Peterson had 12 rushing TDs and 1 receiving, a good year but not MVP worthy according to the voters.

    Watt's 20.5 sacks is even more impressive when you consider that he got them while playing 3-4 DE. 34 linemen are expected to eat up blockers, not make tackles and sacks. Of course his penchant for knocking down passes and his previous occupation as pizza boy/college dropout helped.

    Comments 4 Comments
    1. Andy Freeland's Avatar
      Peterson also won MVP. Shows what I know.
      Reply
    1. wxwax's Avatar
      Can't argue with that. Manning gets Comeback, so they tried to spread it around a bit.

      I wonder if they'd have given Peterson all 3 awards if he'd broken the record?
      Reply
    1. Rich Gapinski's Avatar
      The FP guesses got pretty close. It is a bit surprising to see AD take both, but not as surprising as seeing Tom Brady beat Darrell Green in a 40 yard dash.
      Reply
    1. mkocs6's Avatar
      The five of us got Peterson (for MVP and OPY, by 4/5 majority), Watt (unanimous), RGIII (unanimous), and Manning (unanimous for CPOY). We only missed on DROY, which went to Luke Kuechly, which considering he's a rookie linebacker making a ton of tackles, really should have stunned no one since it's one of the few defensive stats we really measure. All of us voted for Casey Heyward and Bobby Wagner. We missed on Coach of the Year, but that was an interim guy (and there were two votes for him).
      Reply