Only two players in the entire NFL put up more yards from scrimmage in October than Tampa Bay's Doug Martin, and those two (Adrian Peterson and Ahmad Bradshaw) played four games in the month to Martin's three.
No rookies produced anything close to Martin's 467 yards in the season's second month, no matter how many games they played. And on Thursday the league recognized his October dominance, naming Martin the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Month.
Martin is the seventh Buccaneer to win a Rookie of the Month Award, the sixth on offense and the first since current teammate LeGarrette Blount took the honors in September of 2010. Mike Alstott, Warrick Dunn, Shaun King and Cadillac Williams (twice) all won that award, as well, and Karl Williams took Special Teams Rookie of the Month honors in 1996, before that particularly category was retired.
Martin is obviously an excellent choice, though he likely got strong competition from Indianapolis quarterback Andrew Luck (1,125 passing yards, three team wins), Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III (90.0 passer rating, 242 rushing yards), Cleveland RB Trent Richardson (248 rushing yards, two touchdowns), Washington running back Alfred Morris (341 rushing yards) and Tennessee wide receiver Kendall Wright (22 receptions for 203 yards and one TD).
However, it was obviously hard to ignore Martin's league-leading 155.7 yards from scrimmage per game, which was 26.2 yards per game better than Peterson's average. Helping the Bucs go 2-1, Martin ran 58 times for 296 yards (5.1 avg.) and caught eight passes for 171 yards (21.4 avg.). He also scored three times in those three games, twice on the ground and once through the air.
Martin's enormous October has pushed him into a tie for fifth among all NFL players with 767 yards from scrimmage. That has him on a pace for 1,753 combined yards over 16 games, which would easily be the best single-season rookie total in franchise history. Should he reach or surpass that total, it would also be the second-highest total among all players in Buc history, trailing only James Wilder's memorable 2,229-yard campaign in 1984.
