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Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco was presented with the 2008 Diet Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Year award today. Joe was one of five finalists for the honor — running back Matt Forte (Bears), running back Chris Johnson (Titans), quarterback Matt Ryan (Falcons) and running back Steve Slaton (Texans).

You might recall that Matt Ryan won the AP’s Offensive Rookie of the Year Award. So here’s how this thing works. The five finalists were selected because of their outstanding performances throughout the 2008 NFL season. Each week, five nominees were chosen for the Diet Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week and NFL fans voted for the winner on NFL.com and via Sprint wireless. Those results were used to help determine the finalists. This was an excellent class of rookies and any one of the five could’ve won. In the end, Joe was nominated for 10 Diet Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week awards and won twice. A record 1,002,500 fan votes were submitted.

Joe deserves this. (I really feel he and Matt Ryan were the front runners for this award because of the difficulty of the position they play.) He finished the season with 2,971 yards passing and 16 touchdowns (14 throwing and two rushing). But his steady improvement and leadership are what I believed really sealed his successful rookie season. In his final 11 games, Joe guided the Ravens into the playoffs with a 9-2 record. And he had a very impressive 90.2 passer rating during that time. I’m more than optimistic about his chances for success next season and beyond.

Note: A bunch of the NFL’s “sponsored” awards were handed out today. I wrote about this one because I was personally invited to it. Of course, it was kind of hard to attend without actually being in Tampa and all. But I appreciated the offer. The other awards handed out today were the Motorola NFL Coach of the Year (Mike Tomlin), FedEx Air (Drew Brees) and Ground (Adrian Peterson) NFL Players of the Year, and the GMC Sierra Defensive Player of the Year (James Harrison). Congrats to all the winners.

Source: NFL.com/rookie, Photo: Newscom

Post from: Every Morning Quarterback

Joe Flacco: Diet Pepsi NFL ROY