Pro Bowl Defensive Backs

First in a series of posts on the 2009 FLOF Pro Bowl results. This will allow me to talk more in depth about some of the players and I will also note oddities and trends in voting and defend my own votes. Obviously those others who voted can discuss in the comments. For all categories a first team, or primary vote gives a player 2 pts and a second team or runner-up vote gives a player 1 pt. Most points wins. Since 6 people voted, 12 pts would be a unanimous selection.

Pro Bowl Defensive Backs

First Team: Darrelle Revis (8 pts, 4 1st place votes)
First Team: Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie (8 pts, 4 1st place votes)

Second Team: Charles Woodson (5 pts, 1 1st place vote)
Second Team: Brian Dawkins (3 pts, 1 1st place vote)
Second Team: Adrian Wilson ( 3 pts, 0 1st place votes)

Also receiving votes: Asante Samuel (2 pts), DeAngelo Hall (2 pts, 1 first place), Ed Reed (2 pts, 1 first place), Bernard Pollard (1 pt), Darren Sharper (1 pt), Cortland Finnegan (1 pt)

The voting here seemed to go pretty much along pts/gm lines while ignoring the guys with only 1 or 2 games this year. Everyone here averaged more then 7 pts/gm over at least 7 games worth of work. Interestingly none of them played more then 11 games. And other then Woodson most of them were late season plays, all but one start among the other 4 DBs occurred after week 4.

Revis, by the way, was an absolute beast. He was a mid-season free agent acquisition and didn't start a game until week 6 but of his 8 games, 6 were 10 plus games, in only 1 game did he score less then 3 pts.

This outcome was almost exactly my thinking on the issue. Woodson is the only guy here I'd argue with. Sure his 7.3 pts/gm looks good but I think its way skewed by the fact that he had 4 10+ pt games including a 25 pointer. Sure that's impressive, but he also had 5 games where he scored 2 or fewer points. So in half of his 10 starts he basically did nothing for his team. No one else on this list had more then 3 games of 2 or fewer pts. That said, Woodson was certainly on my short list of candidates and not an unworthy vote.

There were some players receiving votes that were unworthy here, the worst would have to be the vote for Bernard Pollard who never even made it onto a FLOF roster this season.