Jared Allen Named Defensive Player Of The Year
By Keith Myers
It should come as no surprise that Fansided NFL has named Jared Allen as it’s Defensive Player of the year. 22 sacks in one season is a pretty rare feet. Especially on a bad team like the Vikings. You can find the official announcement over at NFL Spin Zone.
Here’s the official results:
| Player | pts |
Jared Allen
62
Terrell Suggs
23
Jason Pierre Paul
19
Justin Smith
11
DeMarcus Ware
9
Jason Babin
8
Von Miller
7
Brian Cushing
6
Derrick Johnson
3
Clay Mathhews
3
Jonathan Joesepth
3
Pat Angerer
3
London Fletcher
2
Charles Woodson
1
Sean Witherspoon
1
Connor Barwin
1
Earl Thomas
1
I’m a bit surprised that 49er defensive tackle Justin Smith didn’t get more love in this election. Smith was legitimately one of the top players in the NFL this year. I truly to believe that he deserves to be higher on the list. I’m not surprised that Brian Cushing isn’t higher on the list, even though he put up some monster stats on a very good defense. The entire Houston team seemed to be forgotten and under-appreciated this season.
My ballot for this award looked like this:
1) Jared Allen
2) Jason Pierre-Paul
3) Earl Thomas
In case you can’t tell after looking at my rookie ballots, I use my 3rd (and occasionally my 2nd) place vote to give credit to someone who deserves it, but that I know wont win. That’s why you see Earl Thomas on my ballot. They guy had an outstanding season. If he played on a New York team he’d probably have finished in the top 3. He deserved to get votes, so I made sure that he got at least one.
The player I left off to make sure that Thomas got a vote, was Justin Smith, so it’s at least partly my fault that Smith didn’t get votes I said he deserved.