SteelerWatch

If any of you are faithful Mondesi’s House readers, you’ve probably found this little gem.  Otherwise, unless you have nine-hundred sixty-one Steelers sites in your RSS reader like me (that’s only a small exaggeration), you haven’t seen it.

Pete Prisco of CBS Sportsline (sorry Mondesi, it’s not SI.com) ranked his top 50 players for the seventh year running.  Now, I don’t know who he ranked where in previous years, but this year he blew it big.

While the Steelers were 8-8 last season, they are one year removed from a Super Bowl victory with the vast majority of the starters from that season still on the roster (gone are Jerome Bettis, Jeff Hartings, Antwaan Randle El, Kimo Von Oelhoffen,  Chris Hope and Joey Porter, meaning they still have 16 of 22 starters).  You can’t tell me that one year after a Super Bowl, all 16 of those players have fallen so far as to not be included.

Here’s a sampling to show you how dumb Prisco is:

1) Willie Parker may only have three seasons under his belt, but he has improved each year.  In fact, he had over 1,700 yards from scrimmage and 16 touchdowns in 2006, behind a line that looked average at best and inept at its worst.  He posted two games over 200 yards rushing, and could have potentially come close to breaking the single game record in one of those outings had he not been pulled with over half the fourth quarter to go.  Yet he gets snubbed.

2) Troy Polamalu played 2006 through constant injuries and still managed to be an impact player, particularly in the second half of the season as the defense improved as a whole.  That improvement was due in large part to Troy’s improved health.  Putting his slight drop-off aside, he’s played at a level above and beyond even the upper echelon of safeties his entire career.  He is the centerpiece of a championship defense, and is undoubtedly the defensive MVP.  Prisco included safeties Kerry Rhodes, Bob Sanders, a highly overrated Sean Taylor and — at 22nd, no less — Adrian Wilson of the Cardinals.  But no Troy.

3) Pete got jiggy wit New Orleans Saints defensive end Will Smith at number 27.  Not surprisingly, the only 3-4 DEs on the list are Richard Seymour (who I admit deserves to be there) and fellow Patriot Ty Warren (who is good, but not top-50 good).  Why?  Because 3-4 ends get less respect than Rodney Dangerfield when it comes to defining a “great” player.  But Aaron Smith, the strongest, most athletic 3-4 DE in the league, is missing — even though he is the other half of the trench stuffing tandem of Smith-Hampton.

4) Speaking of Casey Hampton, he isn’t there either.  How — how on earth?! — do you leave the best nose tackle in the last decade off this list?  It’s so hard to find a good, let alone a great, nose tackle, and yet Hampton is so athletic even at 320 pounds that he can drop into shallow coverage over the middle on tight ends and running backs.  There is no other defensive tackle in the league as versatile, and — if you believe the Pro Bowl Bench Press competition is a good indicator — only a single player in the entire league (Larry Allen) stronger than Casey.

5) Hines Ward doesn’t put up outrageous numbers.  He never has.  But he’s a perennial Pro Bowler, and is the most complete receiver in the league.  He’s not the fastest, or the tallest, and he doesn’t have the best hands.  But there are few receivers I would want on my team over Ward when it came down to making sure grabs when it counts, and there is no — no — receiver I would want on the field over Ward on a running play.  And dammit, he’s a Super Bowl MVP.  But Lee Evans is there at number 36, and Prisco himself even said that Evans only “flashed star potential” in 2006.  News flash, Pete: Evans will one day be a star.  Ward already is, and has been since he first became a starter.

6) We may no longer like the guy here at SteelerWatch, but Alan Faneca is one of the top two guards in the league.  Depending on who you talk to, he’s sometimes mentioned as the best, ahead of Steve Hutchinson.  But he was ignored, while Eagle Shawn Andrews was included at #31.

There are non-Steeler items as well.  Things like snubbing Eagle Brian Westbrook while including his teammate, the oft-injured Donovan McNabb.

I understand that this is one man’s opinion.  But if that one man clearly hasn’t watched a game of football in the last six years, then he shouldn’t be allowed to get paid for writing that kind of drivel while those of us who are passionate about it are struggling to pay our hosting bills, just to be heard.

That’s all I have to say about that.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 10:56 pm and is filed under My Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.