Thompson and Capers definitely deserve credit for their Super Bowl year - Thompson hit on a number of undrafted free agents that had to take the place of injured starters, and Capers' defense was great. In retrospect it's kind of obvious that Ted just got lucky one year, and the defense benefitted greatly from both statistical variance (I think they led the league turnover margin) and the presence of a surprisingly resurgent Charles Woodson. You also had Matthews and Raji playing at a level they wouldn't hit the rest of their careers. Their defense fell apart the very next year, which tends not to matter when you're averaging 35 points a game, but they definitely paid the price later on...
― frogbs, Tuesday, 2 January 2018 05:03 (six years ago) link