To pass the time during the offseason, Chris Simms is going through each team in the NFL and naming their best non-quarterbacks in the 21st century. Today was finally the Pittsburgh Steelers day and Simms unveiled a long list of largely expected names.
The above photo listed all the candidates that Simms narrowed slightly down to a group of eight: WRs Hines Ward and Antonio Brown, OG Alan Faneca, C Maurkice Pouncey, DT Cam Heyward, OLBs James Harrison and T.J. Watt, and FS Troy Polamalu. More names than Simms had listed for other teams but he admitted it was a tough list to sift through.
Notable names left off his list include LB Joey Porter, OG David DeCastro, and RB Le’Veon Bell.
Sidebar: for those wondering, the photo has some weird inaccuracies. Jerome Bettis’ tenure with the team is wrong, and Pouncey’s is wildly off, likely a carryover from a previous list that forgot to be changed.
Simms spoke most extensively about the need to include Harrison on the list.
“Harrison was one of the top sack artists in football,” he said on his Chris Simms Unbuttoned podcast. “He did win an NFL defensive MVP. Right. There was another year where I think he was a top two or three vote together in the NFL defensive MVP conversation. So I don’t think we can not have him on this. He’s got the ultimate Super Bowl defensive play.
And he used that argument to convince himself to add Watt to the list as the eighth and final member. Harrison and Watt are two of the league’s top pass rushers this century. They took different paths to get there, Harrison an undrafted free agent who didn’t become a starter until he was almost 30, Watt a first rounder who made an immediate impact. Currently, they have nearly the same number of sacks, Harrison’s 80.5 to Watt’s 77.5, though Watt should pass him early this year and exit this season as the team’s all-time sack leader.
The conversation between Simms and co-host Ahmed Fareed is sort of all over the place and there wasn’t much debate or discussion about who to add to the list. If you could only choose eight, those are probably the correct eight names to have on there. DeCastro was a great guard but lacks the Hall of Fame potential Pouncey has while Porter and Bell simply didn’t play long enough to earn the nod over the eight who made his list.
This is clearly peak offseason content that’s rambling and meaningless. But just like it is for them, it’s something for us to talk about heading into 4th of July weekend.
