So, I'm on ESPN.com today on the AFC East blog looking at their analysis of the Kerry Rhodes trade to Arizona. While there I run across this Scouts Inc. profile on Rhodes that I would like to comment on:
"Rhodes has size, athletic skills and functional play strength. He has deceptive speed and physical toughness. He shows good speed and quickness as a blitzer. He has been a very physical and productive player coming off the edge in zone dogs. He has good closing speed underneath. He takes good angles when supporting the run but can be inconsistent in this phase of the game."
Let me do a little analysis of this critique on Rhodes. Rhodes was consistently half a second late on every single play and usually ended up either throwing his body over a pile or standing around watching. This "deceptive speed" is bullshit and doesn't actually exist. The only time he shows any speed is when he is rushing around the edge and this has resulted in 3 sacks in 3 years. This last year he registered 0 sacks while playing in a Rex Ryan defensive system that sends more blitzers than anybody in the league. As far as "good speed and quickness as a blitzer", I can't really see how this is actually helping him out if he is getting absolutely not sacks.
They then make the claim that Rhodes is "very physical". Do they know the reason that Rex Ryan benched him midway through the season and then proceeded to run him out of New York. He was benched because he was soft on tackling Wes Welker in one of the Patriots games earlier in the season. This was a trend that we had to deal with all season. Rhodes consistently misses tackles and doesn't show any of this toughness that Scounts Inc. claims he has. As far as taking "good angles to support the run", it seems to me that this is some bullshit that can be said to appease any fan because there really is no argument against it. I don't have the access to the tapes of all of Kerry Rhodes games to analyze whether he really does take these good angles. What I do know is that he will consistently miss the tackles after taking these good angles.
I am not a huge Rhodes fan anymore but I do not hate him like the majority of fans. However, I will never take anything Scouts Inc. says seriously after this joke of an analysis. They clearly have not watched enough footage on him and are basing this review off a season that was 3 years ago. If you can't pain an accurate picture, don't even try.
No comments:
Post a Comment