8 NFL Rookie Of The Year Winners Who Failed To Live Up To The Hype

Most of the NFL players who’ve won Rookie of the Year have gone on to have a pretty successful career. However, there are more than a few who essentially peaked during their first season in the league before things went downhill quicker than most people would have predicted.

These NFL players who won Rookie of the Year did not end up living up to the hype

The Associated Press has been picking the best Offensive Rookie of the Year in the NFL since 1957 (defensive players had to wait until 1967 to get in on the action). The list of guys who’ve earned that honor is full of franchise legends and Hall of Famers, but there are also some rising stars who had a fairly meteoric fall from grace.

Eddie Lacy

I’m not ranking these players in any particular order, but if I were, Eddie Lacy would probably end up at the top of the list.

Lacy played running back at Alabama and was selected by the Packers with the 61st overall pick in the second round of the 2013 NFL Draft. He racked up 1,178 rushing yards and punched the ball into the end zone 11 times during his first season in Green Bay, which was good enough to get 70% of the vote while being named the Offensive Rookie of the Year.

He had a similarly impressive sophomore campaign, but things took a turn due to the weight and conditioning issues that became an incredibly hot topic of discussion after his stats significantly declined in 2015.

He only appeared in five games with the Packers the following year due to an ankle injury that ended what ended up being his final season with the team, and he found himself out of the league after just five years following a disappointing one-and-done stint with the Seahawks.

Robert Griffin III

Robert Griffin III made a name for himself as a dual-threat quarterback at Baylor before the team now known as the Commanders scooped him up with the second pick in 2012.

They passed on the chance to draft Andrew Luck, but it looked like they made a solid call when Griffin won Rookie of the Year after passing for 3,200 yards, throwing 20 touchdowns, and respectively adding 815 and seven on the ground. He led the team to the playoffs, although they lost in the first round in a game where he tore his ACL.

His individual stats didn’t fall off a cliff during his second season, but Washington went 3-10 with Griffin as a starter before he was benched in favor of Kirk Cousins. Those two men ended up engaged in a QB battle that also included Colt McCoy, and Cousins eventually emerged as the man for the job before Griffin was benched for the entirety of the 2015 season.

He spent four more years in the league after signing with the Browns in 2016, but he was largely relegated to a backup role during the...