When it comes to Pittsburgh Steelers fourth-year safety Shamarko Thomas, it seems that for a lot of people it is a struggle to evaluate him outside of the prism of the ambitions that were prescribed for him when he was drafted, given the role of inheriting the strong safety spot that Troy Polamalu controlled for so long.
This is, of course, absent the fact that the was just a mid- to late-fourth-round draft pick, where the focus tends to be on the fact that the Steelers traded a third-round pick to get that pick to select him.