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A Minor Disagreement with SN

by Gman2797

created February 01, 2008, last edited March 06, 2009

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I was looking through my copy of Sporting News today and saw that they had their NFL All SN team in there. The two running backs are LT and AP. How is AP in there? He had two good games. The guy completely fell apart down the stretch. The last 4 games he had 144 rushing yards. Total! And only 182 total yards in those games. You can't be up for all pro/all year lists if you can't do anything down the stretch. I understand the two games that he completely destroyed the other teams were great but this isn't a player of the week award. When his team needed him most, at the end of the year, he was nowhere to be found.

Who should be there you ask. Brian Westbrook should get the honors. Not counting weeks where either him or AP were injured, Westbrook outgained him in yards from scrimmage in 10 of the 13 games. BW had 2104 total yards from scrimmage compared to AP's 1609. I am not saying that AP didn't have a good year, 1600 total yards is really good but he only cleared 100 total yards in 7 of his games. And 5 of them were in the first 5 games of the year. Westbrook totaled 100 yards in 12 of his games and the other 3 he played in he got 92,92, and 99. Those are pretty good numbers.

If you want to argue for only rushing yards than AP would win for total yards. But each back only ran for over 100 yards six times this season. AP is the better running back based on rushing yards but I think most backs are asked to do much more than that now.

For any other argument out there I have some more evidence against AP. AP scored 13 tds compared to BW's 12, not a big difference. Neither team made the playoffs, BW didn't have someone else to carry part of the load like Chester Taylor for AP, BW missed fewer games than AP (2-1), and BW played in a much tougher division.

Seems pretty clear to me that The Sporting News got this one wrong. Brian Westbrook deserved the honor ahead of Adrian Peterson.

Article originally posted on calling audibles.

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Tyrone BriggsHall of Famer

676 days ago

Score 2

For some reason, this came to mind: "Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause if it leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put out in K.P."

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