Yes, both Ben's article and the Ringer article made this point, and made it well. It is a powerful point.
But there are ways to rebut it and reasons people may choose to downplay it, nonetheless.
Defensive stats are kind of like IQ tests or college entrance tests. They are as close as we seem to be able get to measuring the thing we want to measure (intelligence, defensive ability, for example), but there are a lot of good reasons to think that not all parts of the whole basket of attributes we value (about intelligence, defense) are completely measurable. Or that someone's place within a particular system may predispose them toward higher scores according to the leading measures that exist.
It's great that Rudy scores high on virtually all the measures, because each measure looks for something a little different than other measures. But this is not the same thing as saying that all things that are valued about defensive ability (or intelligence for that matter) can be measured by the set of all measures. Even though the tests collectively measure a lot, they're not collectively taking into account everything we value about defense, simply because some of those things are unmeasurable (or depend too much on teams' systems).
This doesn't change the fact that I think Rudy's the best defensive player in the world. It just acknowledges that there are limits to the measures we have, even when utilized collectively.
