James Harrison named defensive player of the year

[Kensat30]

Reed - only unanimous All-Pro

[mattb47]

i love how all these MVP threads are just filled with guys who are talking up players from their favorite team. harrison over reed...fine. polamalu over reed ..im not buying that. reed was the best safety in the league this year, period.

Anyone find it ironic that it's a Raven's fan pointing this out and then stating as a fact that Reed was better than Polamalu this year? I'm not saying it's wrong...just thought it was funny that you pointed that out and then proceeded to do the exact same thing...

i didnt come into the thread proclaiming reed should have won the DPOY.... i didnt come in and simply say he was the best until people start throwing out players from the position that werent in the discussion, and that have bias....that wasnt the point of me posting in here. thats the difference.

If you say so man.

[steelerfan513]

i didnt come into the thread proclaiming reed should have won the DPOY.... i didnt come in and simply say he was the best until people start throwing out players from the position that werent in the discussion, and that have bias....that wasnt the point of me posting in here. thats the difference.

You're probably referring to my post deluxe, although I know you weren't specifically referring to me.

I wouldn't consider my post "throwing out players." Most of the disagreement in here came from whether DeMarcus Ware or Ed Reed deserved DPOY over James Harrison. I tried to refute the argument for Reed by saying that Reed may not have been the best safety in the league this year, let alone the best player, using Polamalu as an example. The discussion didn't have much direction, so I thought saying something different than what was being said would be productive.

I used Polamalu because him and Reed were almost unquestionably the two best safeties in the league this year. After all, Reed received a unanimous 50 out of 50 possible All-Pro votes, and Polamalu got 46. Is that really biased?

Say the arguments for Polamalu are biased if you want. The reasons for presenting them may have been biased. After all, I'm definitely more inclined to argue in favor of the Steelers than against them. But so far, I've presented stats and arguments that support Polamalu over Reed, and I think that holds a lot more weight than:

polamalu over reed ..im not buying that. reed was the best safety in the league this year, period.

[mattb47]

Reed - only unanimous All-Pro

Pretty sure that's as big of a statement about the lack of quality Free Safeties out there as it is about Reed himself. He's obviously the best FS and is a great player...but how many other very good FS's are there in the NFL?

[steelerfan513]

Reed - only unanimous All-Pro

Pretty sure that's as big of a statement about the lack of quality Free Safeties out there as it is about Reed himself. He's obviously the best FS and is a great player...but how many other very good FS's are there in the NFL?

Voting isn't separated into FS and SS.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3821666

On an unrelated note, James Harrison got a vote for the All-Pro team at inside linebacker. I guess he's just that good.

[joejlitz]

Pretty sure that's as big of a statement about the lack of quality Free Safeties out there as it is about Reed himself. He's obviously the best FS and is a great player...but how many other very good FS's are there in the NFL?

We've got a guy named Brian Dawkins who's not too shabby.

[Dr. Duran Duran]

Reed - only unanimous All-Pro

Considering James Harrison plays LB, it's no surprise he wasn't voted unanimously. Think of all the great linebackers that play in the NFL and how few safties jump out at you.

[ndirish84]

Ed Reed?? Lets be real. Ok he led the league in interceptions and had a couple touchdowns... you guys are acting as if he had some phenomenal season.. he was mediocre the whole first half of the season just look at the stats.. if you look at the last few seasons 9 INT and 2 TD is actually pretty similar with the tops every year. Dude had 41 total tackles.. You really feel comfortable giving the DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR award to someone who averaged 2.5 total tackles a game.. Come on ravens fans give it up

[deluxe_247]

Ed Reed?? Lets be real. Ok he led the league in interceptions and had a couple touchdowns... you guys are acting as if he had some phenomenal season.. he was mediocre the whole first half of the season just look at the stats.. if you look at the last few seasons 9 INT and 2 TD is actually pretty similar with the tops every year. Dude had 41 total tackles.. You really feel comfortable giving the DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR award to someone who averaged 2.5 total tackles a game.. Come on ravens fans give it up

LOL there is only one ravens fan here dude, and i said that both harrison and ware were deserving, and didnt say i thought reed should have been a lock for the award by any means. the people talking about reed in this thread outside of my comments- which were comparing him to polamalu- were not fans of the ravens.

but i think you are onto something....his season was pretty much no big deal. almost average.

he had about 20 more tackles, 7 less passes defended and 2 less tds.. and pretty much the same stats all across the board a few years back when he won DPOY...those 1.25 tackles a game make a huge difference with this award.


and to you steelers fans, im not going to debate with you guys about this any more. we all know we will defend our guys to the death against our enemies, so its pointless.

but reed still outplayed polamalu this season.

[ndirish84]

alright well even the polamalu argument is dumb.. sure he's got a great eye for picking the ball off and running with it.. but hes not really that great of an all around player.. really how can you be this excited about a defensive player (especially a safety and a supposed team leader) whose tackles numbers are comparable to special teamers?