Of the 50 voters on the Associated Press panel that chooses the All-Pro team, 49 of them selected Detroit’s Calvin Johnson at wide receiver. The one who did not was Tim Ryan of FOX Sports and SiriusXM NFL Radio.
The AP confirmed to PFT that Ryan, a former NFL defensive tackle who played for the Bears from 1990 to 1994, was the lone voter who left Megatron off his All-Pro ballot.
Why didn’t Ryan consider Johnson -- who set a new single-season record for receiving yards -- as one of the two best receivers in the NFL last year? I don’t know. I left a voicemail with Ryan and sent an email to FOX Sports’ PR department seeking his reasoning, but I have not heard back.
As a FOX analyst, Ryan worked the Lions’ games against the Rams, Seahawks and Cardinals in 2012. Those were not his best games -- he averaged 93 yards a game in those three, compared to 130 yards a game in his other 13 games -- so perhaps that colored Ryan’s voting.
Still, a voter should consider the entire season, and not simply the games he personally attended, and on that standard it’s hard to see how there were two better receivers than Johnson. No one else in the NFL even came within 350 receiving yards of Johnson last season, so it’s tough to make a statistical case that there was even one NFL receiver better than Johnson in 2012. We hope to hear from Ryan, so he can explain why he thinks there was not just one receiver better than Johnson, but two.