Another slew of NFL honors came out and once again Chicago Bears linebacker Roquan Smith was not recognized. This time it was the NFL Pro Bowl doing the snubbing.
"It's unfortunate. It's a travesty to me that that he's he's not any of those accolades," Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai told the media on Thursday.
"He deserves every single accolade that one of the best linebackers in the league deserves, and he has one of the best linebackers in the league."
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Smith was also snubbed of a Pro Bowl nod last season. Before the 2021 NFL season, Smith was left off the NFL's Top 100 players list.
"With the stats that he's got, obviously, he's got the interception for a touchdown, he's top five in tackles, solo and in total," Desai noted. "He's at the top of every category in the league and his play in his relentless nature and his speed on the tape shows up every week."
Dallas Cowboys rookie Micah Parsons and Seattle Seahawks' Bobby Wagner got the two NFC slots. Who do you knock out? Wagner has more tackles than Smith by a healthy margin.
And as Mark Potash and many Twitter users have noted, while Smith has netted considerably more tackles than Parsons, the rookie's sack total is higher.
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"Micah Parsons is a different linebacker in a different system. You know, Roquan's played a true inside linebacker position for us all the time," Desai said.
Perhaps Parsons should've gotten the nod as a pass rusher instead.
"You can skew it however you want to skew it. But the one thing you can't skew is that this guy is in the top five and pretty much everything," Desai said. "And so you can look at whoever you want to look at and compare him to whoever you want to look at. But when you look at the production on the tape and you see the speed and the instincts which this guy plays with and how he gets people around him better, he's kind of been the one constant for us this year that's played in every single game.
"And that has been that productive every single game, week in and week out. His ability to get off blocks, his ability to diagnose scheme and diagnose plays and get to the ball carrier on a consistent basis is unique, and I think that's what needs to be emphasized."