Fox says Portis up; Defense down

[jermus22]

It amazes me how people worry about our MLB position after forgetting that Pierce was little more than a backup OLB at the beginning of last season. I certainly liked his potential as a weakside LB but never thought he'd be a pro-bowl caliber MLB. Marshall's skills are similar to those of Pierce, and we have plenty of other candidates competing with him for the job.
As for CB, everybody forgets how well we did against Minnesota in the season-finale, despite having Smoot out with injury. Minnesota had one of the league's most formidable passing attacks, and we held them to 18 points (their last eight points came from a Hail Mary with a two point conversion in the final seconds). I'm no genius, but some of these sportswriters seem like they don't know what they're talking about.