re: Rob Ninkovich expected to announce retirement

I know he missed like 4 games last year but he only played 44% of the snaps while playing 75% of the games.

2015 he played 81% of the snaps, so 4 out of 5 defensive snaps. While still good, that's nowhere near the league lead.

You are correct that in 2013 (95%) and 2014 (93%) he played a high count, but that's still not near the league lead and it's no coincidence that was 2 of his 3 eight sack years.

2012 he only played 83%, and again while a high count, it's still a good bit of rotation.

The site I'm using doesn't list before 2012, but in 2010 he only started 10 games. Last year was the first time he missed any games with the Pats outside of 1 game in 2009 (in which he started no games).

So the point still stands he was a role player. He played a lot of snaps most of his time but only had two years he played most of them.

And the point still stands that he wasn't some huge diamond the Pats stole from us because we were too stupid. The Pats barely used him his first year there and it took until his 5th year to start getting starts (10). And he didn't have dominant stats. He had good role players stats and that's what he was: a good role player.