25 best Offensive Rookie of the Year winners ranked by playing career

25 best Offensive Rookie of the Year winners ranked by playing career: 12. Franco Harris – Pittsburgh Steelers

Franco Harris’ entire tenure in the NFL comes down to one play. It’s the Immaculate Reception. It happened on December 23, 1972, and there is still a statue of it in the Pittsburgh Airport to this day. It’s coming up on the 40 year anniversary, but this one play lives over Pittsburgh still. However, Harris had an entire career outside of that play, and it was a great career at that.

Harris clearly started off scorching hot, rushing for more than 1,000 yards and 10 touchdowns in his first season. Then, he got over 1,000 yards in six of the next seven seasons. He had north of ten touchdowns in five of those seasons, including a league-leading 14 touchdowns in 1976.

He made nine consecutive Pro Bowls, showing he kept himself among the game’s greats for just about every year of his career. Rushing for 1,000 yards in eight seasons total broke a record once held by Jim Brown. It has since been broken by five different players, but doing what he did in the era he did it was unheard of.

Harris was the first African-American to win the Super Bowl MVP. He was also part Italian American, which really brought a new section of fans to the Steelers faithful. Harris left the game third all-time in rushing yards, less than 200 yards behind Jim Brown’s record. Walter Payton ended up taking it that season. He also had 91 career rushing touchdowns, which is still 11th all-time today.