FSU Football Alums: Derwin James has to be NFL Rookie of The Year

Derwin James has continued to ball with the Los Angeles Chargers after a stellar career with the Seminoles that was shorter than we wanted.

Since the awards were first handed out in the 1967 season, only three former FSU football layers have brought home the AP Rookie of the Year Award on either offense or defense in the respective seasons: Peter Boulware for the Baltimore Ravens and Warrick Dunn for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, both in 1997, and Anquan Boldin for the Arizona Cardinals in the 2003 season.

At this rate, you might as well go ahead and put down Los Angeles Chargers safety Derwin James as the fourth person on that list as the man now rocking No. 33 in the City of Angels is showing the league why the 14 teams with picks ahead of the Chargers made a mistake during last April’s NFL Draft in skipping over James (Cleveland and Buffalo each had two).

So far this season, James has combined for 93 tackles through the first 13 games to go along with three and a half sacks and three interceptions – all while making sure to show up at the right time, just like he did for the two seasons (and a game and a half in 2016 before injury) while playing for FSU football.

The latest highlight play came in Thursday’s win over the Kansas City Chiefs when James came up and laid the wood to Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce on a big third down that gave the ball back to the Chargers in a game they would end up winning by one point at the end.

It was yet another moment in which Derwin James drew the attention of a nationwide audience to see what we in the FSU football nation knew all along: he’s pretty damn good and the teams who passed on him (including my Ravens, who traded the pick before) are going to learn the mistake they made soon enough.

Across social media, football fans are taking notice and saying that James needs to bring home some hardware once the season is over – while trolling those who could have had him.

For the fourth straight season, James will be playing postseason football as the Chargers clinched a playoff spot with that comeback win – meaning fans will get a chance to hear more about Derwin James into at least the first week of the postseason and maybe longer at this point.

It will also give those 14 teams a chance to see the mistake they made – well, 13 teams since they Chargers could end up playing the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl at this rate.