SImon was a rookie last year, per playing time on the field.
Trust me, I was pissed as hell at his performance in the SB, and I'm not ecstatic about him being the #1 on that side going into next season (now we have some competition), but if our GM was as impatient as most fans seem to be, we would never have seen the good years from Maxwell.
Maxwell was injured a lot his first couple of years and took a while to work his way into the starting lineup. Let's see....Simon was injured his first year (due to a preexisting injury from college, so we knew about it), and got plugged in this year, his rookie year on the field.
Simon has looked better than Maxwell and Lane did to start their careers, and got kudos from Sherman as being farther along at that point in his career than Sherm himself was.
I know Simon is the popular .net whoopin boy (and he should be to start the year), but it doesn't mean he's irredeemable. I think he'll be fine going forward, if he can let go of last year, or use it to fuel his performance going forward.