Double-T Nation Post Season Awards | Special Teams MVP

This is the second annual "Double-T Nation's Post Season Awards". The categories which the DTN community will be nominating and voting are as follows: Offensive Rookie of the Year; Defensive Rookie of the Year; Most Improved Offensive Player; Most Improved Defensive Player; Special Teams Player of the Year; Offensive Player of the Year; Defensive Player of the Year; and Most Valuable Player. I'll be doing a post where you nominate players for the specific category and then I'll open up the poll the next day.

I don't know if there's much point in even writing about the candidates, but I will. It's pretty clear to me that Texas Tech legend, Matt Williams is the leading candidate, but it's really up to all of you. We'll talk about Williams first, who made 9 of 11 field goals and 56 of 56 extra points. That's pretty darned good, and despite having a solid senior season, I thought I'd take us all down memory lane and remind everyone that Williams was asked to kick for free rent during the 2008 season, against UMass. It took about a month before Williams was traveling with the team and the rest is history.

And Williams was solid for the entire time that he kicked and he made extra points uneventful because he nailed them through the uprights.

And now we get to the guy that did make extra points eventful, and he's the kicker for the forseeable future, which makes me nervous, Donnie Carona. Carona was mainly the kickoff kicker, where he had 78 kickoffs for a 63.40 average and had 21 touchbacks at a 26.92% rate. He also had 10 punts (which I don't remember at all) for a 47.50 average. And to the field goals, he was 1 of 4 (although to be fair, Carona really only kicked the long field goals) and didn't kick any extra points.

Last, but not least, Jonathan LaCour was responsible for the punting duties, after being suspended for all of the 2009 season, LaCour punted all of last year, allowing 2009 punter, Ryan Erxleben, to redshirt last year. LaCour was okay and certainly not great by any means as LaCour had 57 punts for a 39.30 average. Meh.

The returners were okay, but nothing special. Detron Lewis had 10 punt returns last year while Austin Zouzalik had 6. Lewis average 6.20 YPR, which isn't great, but I'm guessing that the thought was that Lewis is sure-handed and won't botch away any punts. Zouzalik didn't even average 1 YPR. Eric Stephens averaged 24.34 yards per kickoff return which is okay, but overall, Texas Tech had the 6th best return game in the conference.  Maybe I'm biased, but I just didn't think the return game garners a candidate for this award, but I decided to add them anyway because there just aren't many candidates.

If I've missed someone, I've got a space for you to vote for "Other" and you'll need to have a comment with the subject line "Other" and then list the player that you think deserves the award.

DTN Post Season Award Winners

• Offensive MVP |
• Defensive MVP |
• Special Teams MVP |
• Offensive Most Improved Player | WR Lyle Leong
• Defensive Most Improved Player | LB Sam Fehoko
• Offensive Rookie of the Year | RB Ben McRoy
• Defensive Rookie of the Year | S Tre' Porter