Antoine Winfield Jr. deserves Defensive Rookie of the Year
By Rob Leeds
Give Antoine Winfield Jr. what he deserves.
This season, the national media has shown a distasteful amount of disrespect towards the Buccaneers. While the added success was supposed to bring the limelight towards all of the deserving players on the roster, the individual awards never came.
Lavonte David, Ryan Jensen, Ali Marpet, and Devin White not dominating the All-Pro and Pro Bowl rosters is a travesty, and it shows the bias the media shows towards the large-market teams.
Half of the Ravens’ roster will make the Pro Bowl every year from now on. Bobby Wagner could sit the whole season on the bench and end with a comfortable spot on the first-team All-Pro roster. All of this happens while the Buccaneers, as the second-best team in the NFL, fail to gain almost any traction where it counts.
While some fans would argue “the wins are all that matter,” the individual accolades also have their place. These awards come in handy during contract negotiations and for Hall of Fame conversations every year, so clearly, they do matter.
The media has done the Buccaneers a disservice this season, but they can rectify their mistake by awarding the most deserving rookie with Defensive Rookie of the Year.
Antoine Winfield Jr. deserves this award above all his other competition by a healthy margin, and the various competing performances show that it isn’t particularly close, which will just make it that much more disappointing when Chase Young wins it.