Mathews had 16 chances to win this award. McKnight got 1. Mathews will definitely get the Rookie of the Week but doesn't deserve it since he played like shit for the first 15 weeks. It's a weekly award... I know
What did Joe McKnight do for the first 15 weeks? For the record, Mathews only played in 12 games. ...and in five of those games, Norv Turner gave him less than 10 carries.
We both know the answer. I think it sucks for McKnight though. He did shoot himself in the foot by starting TC out of shape and fumbling in the preseason but in his only legitimate opportunity this year he played downright awesome. Sucks that he was outperformed by another rookie who has started all/most of the year and up to this point, hasn't put up a good performance. Not really knocking either of 'em, but it's a case of bad luck I guess.
I'm one of the biggest Joe McKnight supporters on TGG. I'm glad he finally got an opportunity, but Mathews scored 3 TDs and that puts him over the top. We shouldn't care about this stupid award. The fact that McKnight showed great potential is good enough for me. Mike Tolbert and Darren Sproles started over Ryan Mathews. I guess the coaching staff trusted Tolbert more. Mathews was given an opportunity and McKnight never was. In my opinion, Mathews underachieved big time this season. You know what's sad about that though? He outperformed CJ Spiller and Jahvid Best in less games. LeGarrette Blount was the best rookie back this year and he didn't even get drafted. All three of these other guys were first rounders. People who were down on McKnight should look around the league. A lot of guys that were drafted ahead of him didn't do anything this year: Ben Tate and Montario Hardesty were both injured early in the year. Toby Gerhart was mediocre in limited time. Dexter McCluster was constantly injured. If you look at this pick now, besides Tampa Bay's pick up of Blount, McKnight could be the steal of the 2010 running back class.
Yeah, I'm not worried about Rookie of the Week, I'm glad he's made so much progress since the last time we saw him in a game. It sounded good what the coaches were saying but you can't go by that, what are they going to say? We knew he could run, he showed he could handle the load for a whole game and hang onto the ball. Kind of reminded me of those 4th pre-season games vs the Eagles we have every year.
And what's interesting is that if Blount didn't have 30 character issues he would have been drafted pretty damn high.
