Saquon Barkley wins offensive rookie of the year

Posted by Charean Williams on February 2, 2019, 5:29 PM EST
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Baker Mayfield was the first overall choice. Saquon Barkley went second.

Both proved worth it with rookie-of-the-year type seasons.

But only one could win offensive rookie of the year, and that went to the Giants running back.

Barkley also won the Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Year award voted on by fans. He received that earlier in the week.

Mayfield and Barkley had a small wager on the award, with the winner getting a chain from the runner-up. So Barkley will get his choice of jewelry.

“I did win, so I do get a chain,” Barkley said in his press conference.

Barkley received 26.5 votes to 21.5 for Mayfield. Colts offensive guard Quenton Nelson, the only offensive rookie to make first-team All-Pro, received the other two votes.

Barkley led the league in yards from scrimmage with 2,028. Mayfield threw for 3,725 yards and 27 touchdowns.

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36 responses to “Saquon Barkley wins offensive rookie of the year”

  3. Agreed @TinyHands. I am also a Browns fan. Will always wonder how 3725/27 looks without Hue at the helm to start the season. Wish them both well. Still think we made the right choice though.

  7. OROY award is a curse just by looking at previous winners. Baker should be thankful he didn’t win it. He may have just dodged a bullet.

  9. Baker wins Rookie of the week 7 times. Rookie of the month 2 times and still doesn’t win! Sets Rookie TD pass record in 13 starts and still doesn’t win. Takes the Browns from 0 wins to 7 wins and still doesn’t win! NY bias!

  13. If this fuels Baker and his hyper-competitiveness to continue taking his game to the next level, then I’m all for it.

  16. There is no way Bake should have lost this; no way! Look at what he accomplished with the team he took over, the records he set (goodbye Peyton!), the team record vs. what Barkley did. Not to take away from Barkley; normally he would have been a shoe-in. But this year Bake was head and shoulders above and it should have been a landslide. As a Browns fan, I am glad this happened. Mayfield will use it for motivation and be even better than we all hoped.

  18. I was going to say that this was all about stats and stats only, however, I was reading another web site where the HOF athlete said that if Baker had played the whole year, he would have given him the vote not Barkley. Seriously?

  20. Saquon deserves it. Whether the team is good or not has nothing to do with who is the best individual player. Also Cleveland still had a losing record

  21. Giants fan saying this one truly should’ve been a tie. Barkley doing what he did behind one of the worst lines in the sport and snipers keying on him every play; and Mayfield virtually transforming both the performance and culture of a perpetual cellar dweller. Congrats to both fan bases on their teams’ great picks and all the best to both franchises going forward.

  23. Both guys were deserving….congrats to Saquon…..when was the last time the 1-2 picks in the draft went 1-2 in rookie voting like this……defense or offense. Both teams made great picks…..

  24. Don’t think you’ll see a top 3 draft like this for a while.

    Giants fans get a lot of crap for picking Barkley over Darnold but either pick would of been a win win and same goes for the Browns. Barkley is a dominant running back in the running game and passing game, Baker gave Cleveland the QB they’ve been searching for for decades, and Darnold really did incredible things the second half of the year for a 21 year old rookie QB.

  25. Saquon had an insane rookie year. Id still give it to baker though, the voters went ff stats over most valuable to their team.

  27. The bigger the chip on Baker’s shoulder, the better the browns franchise will benefit. Keep the haslems out of football decisions and let football people do football teams. The ceiling is really high

  28. Yawn. Clearly the New York effect is in play here.
    The media is based in NY and if they can give an award to a NY player they will do it EVERY time.

  30. Ray Chamberlain says:
    February 2, 2019 at 7:05 pm
    The bigger the chip on Baker’s shoulder, the better the browns franchise will benefit. Keep the haslems out of football decisions and let football people do football teams. The ceiling is really high

    Who are the haslems?

  31. Let’s see – Mayfield takes over a team that had gone 1-31 the past two years and 0-1-1 in 2018 to 7-8-1. He won the first game he entered and kept the Browns relevant until the last game of the season. In effect – plus 7 impact on wining ratio. Barkley managed to propel a Giants team from a record in 2017 of 3-13 to 5-11 – at most a plus 2. Mayfield set the rookie touchdown record while never approaching Peyton Manning’s interception record. Barkley rushed for 1,307 yards with 721 receiving yards or a total of 2028 yards from scrimmage. Mayfield had a record of 6-7 with a completion percentage of 63.7 and 3725 yards. Though the numbers massively favor Mayfield he did far more. Mayfield became the fulcrum upon which the Browns leveraged their future. Like Brady this insult spat by the NY based media will fuel Mayfield – it is a slight that will fire him for years – perhaps decades. The Giants will be irrelevant next year with Eli as their QB and OBJ campaigning to leave. Barkley is a talented running back from NYC – a nice, safe face for the media while Baker Mayfield frightens the NFL suits – just as Namath did a half century ago. Cleveland can look to a future filled with relevance while the Giants point to undeserved trophies to shield the owners from a mass uprising by the fans while trying to hide the team’s obscurity. The fans know the truth. Outside of NYC Baker Mayfield is the Rookie of the Year; the Maras and Tischs know too.

  32. Leman Russ says:
    February 2, 2019 at 6:22 pm
    Mayfield was a turnover machine. The right guy won.
    ———————————————————-
    14 games 93.7 QBR 310-486 3,725 yds 63.8% 266.1 yds. per game 27 tds 14 ints 2 FL

    yep, turnover machine…

  33. Baker was the most valuable rookie. Saquon was the best offensive rookie…and the numbers support it. He led the NFL in yards from scrimmage. I mean, seriously.

  34. I’m a Giants fan who could care less about this award. You can’t compare a franchise QB with a generational RB. Give me the QB all the time…RB’s are a dime a dozen and plug and play positions (the least important position on the football team). You don’t build your team around a RB and it was crazy for the Giants to use the 2nd pick in the draft for Barkley no matter how good he is.

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