One More Point on Pro Bowl Cole

Thanks to a commenter on this SI page for pointing out the incredibly 'duh' fact -- which I think so far has mostly been missed -- that Pro Bowl voting closed a week before the teams were announced (although not two weeks as he said). 

Fan voting closed on December 11th.  Coaches and players voted on December 13-14.  At the time of the voting, therefore, Trent Cole had 11.5 sacks and Osi Umenyiora had 12.  Furthermore, two of Cole's sacks came in the 12/9 game against the Giants, right at the end of the voting period.  Cole had 0.5 sacks in his previous five games. 

I think Cole deserved to go to, for all the reasons Andrews lays out in the comments a few posts down, but especially given the timeline involved it goes too far to say he was "robbed."

Comments

[McTumms]

Talk about a guy developing... The important thing from a fan's perspective is that the guy has now shown that he isn't necessarily going to lose it the second half of the season. Just a quarter of it. And that, my friends, is progress. Too bad about the Pro Bowl, though. He deserved it. Who knows, he may still get a chance to make the trip.

[Andrew]

Cole was robbed by the process of selection, because he is clearly the better player over Umeniyora.

Also, the idea that a player must get good and then he gets a trip the next year is belied by the first time rewards handed out recently to Derrick Burgess, Osi Umeniyora, and Kyle Van Den Bosch the first time they hit double digit sacks.

Cole got jobbed plain and simple just like Westbrook last year, and its difficult to think of a D-end playing as well as he has who got pointedly excluded.