Rhodes by far, watching him play is so much fun, he is currently the only elite player on the team and should have walked into the exceedingly irrelevant Pro Bowl. Troy Polamalu's hair made it instead.
Sure...it says that the opposition is spending most of the game running all over you. Revis has impressed me the most though. He's come in as a rookie and done an admirable job defending the opposition's top WRs.
Disagree- Rhodes' play for the first half of the season was sketchy, at best. Blown coverage, poor tackling in one or two spots, and no picks. He only turned on the engine midway through. That being said, he's been a beast for the 2nd half of the season and has certainly warranted a contract extension this offseason.
Has anyone nominated Harris yet??? I nominate Revis because he stepped in and played CB1 from day one better than any rookie CB in recent memory IMO.
Yeah, I figured that I didn't need to nominate Harris at this point. Any answers other than Harris, Revis, Rhodes, Cotchery, Washington, and Mangold (with honorable mention for Coles fighting through injury) seem impossible, which really tells you how bad it's been - only 1/3 of the starters have even been decent, when it comes down to it.
Rhodes' coverage has improved exponentially every single year, I can't remember too many blown coverages, but maybe you can refresh my memory. He's consistently the guy in the middle of the play, all year long, and the only bad tackling I have seen has been when he's matched on a TE that outweighs him by 50-60 pounds... and he still takes them down because he is the guy trying to finish the play. If you're talking about the times where he is trying to strip the ball... AKA the Jamal Anderson TD, then I would agree with you. But I never saw any trend of bad tackling from him.
David Harris showed more fight than most of our defense despite having played less than a season as starter
Although tempted to say Harris or Revis I'll go with Leon -- under utilized on Offense but almost every exciting play we had this was from him. His return is what won the Pitt game.
