Kam Chancellor Announces Retirement

The Unger for Graham trade was just poor, and I thought obviously so at the time. When you have a legitimately great defense, trading away blocking competency, for a tight end who doesn't contribute much with regard to blocking, when you have a qb who makes big plays when extends pass plays, indicates to me that you don't understand how to win games.

Reed was certainly a better player than Polamalu, and IMO Reed is the best safety to ever play the game. And yes, Polamalu's wild style of play was a double edged sword, and actively harmful once he slowed down a little bit. But Polamalu is still a Hall of Famer, which was the only point I was trying to make--that it's hard enough to get safeties into the hall, and two are going to go in right before or during the time Chancellor comes into consideration. Polamalu has a DPOY, 8 Pro Bowls, 4 First Team All-Pro's, and 2 Second Team. That's one more DPOY but one less Pro Bowl and First Team All Pro than Dawkins, who just got in. Plus Polamalu is going to get a bump in the voters' minds for two Super Bowl wins, and he will probably end up being viewed as the best defender of an era of dominant Steelers defenses.

...and when Polamalu got older and a bit slower, all those breakups, picks and well timed tackled became completions, long completions and whiffs.
The last 3 years of his career, Polamalu was a straight up liability and cringe worthy to watch. Only the half year he played semi-linebacker he was back to being useful.

Polamalu's splits against New England are pretty similar to Reed's, but with a better W-L record.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/P/PolaTr99/splits/
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/ReedEd00/splits/

Wow, I would, um, completely disagree with that.

Polamalu was great and imo clearly better than Reed. I'd strongly disagree with the idea that good teams ate him alive. He dominated the 2005 playoff game against the Colts. Manning just didn't know what to do with him.

On a more macro level, FO showed a while ago that the Steelers defensive DVOA was *way* worse when Polamalu was injured vs when he was healthy, while Baltimore's defensive DVOA was unaffected by Reed's absence.