Pro Bowl Defensive Fronts

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 Fronts:

First Team: Patrick Willis (10 pts, 5 first place votes)

First Team: Jon Beason (9 pts, 3 first place votes)

Second Team: Jared Allen (7 pts, 3 first place votes)

Second Team: James Harrison (3 pts, no first place votes)

Also receiving votes: Ray Lewis (2 pts), Karlos Dansby (2 pts, 1 1st place vote), David Harris (1 pt), Aaron Schobel (1 pt), London Fletcher (1 pt)

If you decided that 7 games or more was your cut-off then the 4 pro-bowl DFs were top 4 in both total points this season and points per game. In fact, they appeared in that order, except for Beason and Allen who ranked 2-3 in pts and pts/gm but came out in the opposite order in pro bowl voting. Unlike the DB voting, the 4 pro-bowlers were pretty much full-time starters all season long -- either 12 or 13 starts.

Willis was crazy good this year. He scored 7 or more points 9 times in 13 starts. [7 points represents the top 1/3 of a DF score over the past couple of seasons.] And his lowest score all season was 5 pts. The average pts for a DF this year was 5.89 per game. He basically never scored less then that.

I also had Willis and Beason 1-2 in my voting. Beason never scored less then 3 pts all season which isn't quite like Willis, but that still means he never failed to contribute. I picked Ray Lewis and David Harris for my second teamers but Harrison and Allen were certainly on my radar. I think that after Willis there were a bunch of solidly good DFs this season so I certainly understand where the Allen and Harrison arguments are coming from. I think Allen is another Charles Woodson in many ways. Allen had 6 games with double digit scores but 4 games where he scored 1 or 0 pts -- which is very much what you can expect from a really good DE in FLOF and I rewarded consistency with my voting more then boom-bust.

Aaron Schobel was the Bernard Pollard vote for this position. He was not on a FLOF roster this year either. In fact, he hasn't scored a FLOF points since 2006 despite playing 1 game last year. And no, the same person who voted for Pollard is not the same person who voted for Schobel.