Darryl Tapp
I admit it; I'm ambivalent about Darryl Tapp. He busts his ass out there, gets some pressure and makes the occasional nice play in run support, but his big day against Milford "Suck" Brown looks - well the name sort of says it all. The rest of his sacks have come against quarterbacks who don't know when to throw it away (Grossman, Garcia, Alex Smith and Troy Smith) with shaky offensive lines (18th, 21st, 31st and 23rd, respectively.) He also consistently fails to seal off the outside edge: recording only 4 tackles on the 31 rushes attempted around left end against Seattle. Wow, I don't know what I'm going to say when I start these, and, really, that number is staggering. I've heaped scorn atop Kelly Jennings and Brian Russell for the Hawks 27th ranked rush defense against runs around left end, but clearly Tapp deserves equal if not more blame for that particular deficiency. That makes a lot of sense, too, because Tapp gets most of his pressures with a good inside move that allows him to make some tackles up the gut, but takes him away from outside run support. 7 is a nice number of sacks for a young defensive end, but Tapp clearly has a long way to go to be a complete player.