Buffalo Sucks
Ronnie: Find Jake. Follow Jake.
From SI.com's Dr. Z - the best, most thorough football writer in America. He places Zach as his one, single MLB all-pro (Urlacher finished 4th in his system) and here
s the text:
Middle Linebacker
Zach Thomas, Miami. Jeremiah Trotter blazed to the forefront. I worried that Thomas was finally beginning to show signs of 1) being undersized, and 2) having too ambitious a workload, with all that coverage he does. Yes, Trotter had a fine year, but so did Thomas, just a tiny bit better. I wish I could have picked both, and lined my unit up in a 3-4, as I did one year, but that would have meant stiffing Seymour, which wouldn't have been fair.
I graded a lot of MLB's because it's fun grading this position. Here are my other finishers and their grades (Thomas and Trotter came in at, respectively, 7.4 and 6.89): Shelton Quarles of the Bucs 5.25, Brian Urlacher of the Bears 5.14 (good range, more sacks this year, still not as solid at the point as other guys are), Mike Peterson of the Jaguars 4.25, Kawicka Mitchell of the Chiefs 4.22, Keith Brooking of the Falcons (4.18), Mike Vrabel of the Patriots 3.7. Others included the Chargers' Donnie Edwards and Randall Godfrey, who were good, but not in the class of the others.
s the text:
Middle Linebacker
Zach Thomas, Miami. Jeremiah Trotter blazed to the forefront. I worried that Thomas was finally beginning to show signs of 1) being undersized, and 2) having too ambitious a workload, with all that coverage he does. Yes, Trotter had a fine year, but so did Thomas, just a tiny bit better. I wish I could have picked both, and lined my unit up in a 3-4, as I did one year, but that would have meant stiffing Seymour, which wouldn't have been fair.
I graded a lot of MLB's because it's fun grading this position. Here are my other finishers and their grades (Thomas and Trotter came in at, respectively, 7.4 and 6.89): Shelton Quarles of the Bucs 5.25, Brian Urlacher of the Bears 5.14 (good range, more sacks this year, still not as solid at the point as other guys are), Mike Peterson of the Jaguars 4.25, Kawicka Mitchell of the Chiefs 4.22, Keith Brooking of the Falcons (4.18), Mike Vrabel of the Patriots 3.7. Others included the Chargers' Donnie Edwards and Randall Godfrey, who were good, but not in the class of the others.