Is The NFL Blacklisting Kerry Rhodes?
Free agent safety Kerry Rhodes was more or less outed by Media Takeout during the offseason (the pictures that MTO posted of him with another man appear to have been scrubbed from the site). He still hasn't found a job. This is fucked up, because Kerry Rhodes is good. In fact, by many metrics, he's very good.
Rhodes picked off four passes last season (two of them came against the Jets, but still!) and was part of the fifth-best pass defense in the NFL. Pro Football Focus had him ranked as the fourth-best safety in all of football in 2012. Apart from the retired Ronde Barber, Rhodes is the only player in PFF's top 30 safeties from 2012 that doesn't currently have a job.
Look at his career stats and you will see that there was no obvious drop-off in the quality of Rhodes's play in 2012 compared to the seven previous seasons. He's been serviceable at worst and Pro Bowl-caliber at best. Nothing about him has changed except for the fact that someone put up a picture of him with his arm around a dude. Rhodes has vehemently denied the gay rumors, and yet the mere suspicion of his gayness seems to have been enough to make him unemployable.
If you watched any of the games from Week 1, you know that there are roughly 50 teams that could use improved safety play. According to Mike Florio, four teams tried out defensive backs this week: the Bucs, Colts, Dolphins and Seahawks. None of them brought in Rhodes. The second David Wilson put two balls on the ground against the Cowboys, Tom Coughlin was sprinting to the waiver wire to find any running back with 10 fingers and a working spinal cord (he grabbed Brandon Jacobs, which indicates that he failed in that task). Why a team like the Ravens—who were DESTROYED by Julius Thomas and the rest of the Denver passing offense—wouldn't do the same thing and at least kick the tires on Rhodes is baffling.
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http://deadspin.com/is-the-nfl-blacklisting-kerry-rhodes-1300128496
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