For a prospect who was regarded before the 1997 draft as too slow to make the transition from linebacker to the secondary in the NFL, who was thought by scouts to lack the kind of range and skills requisite to the new position, New Orleans strong safety Sammy Knight has certainly made up a lot of ground in a short time.

	Sammy Knight has 22 career interceptions, including five this season.

If he keeps performing at his current level, in fact, the fifth-year veteran is apt to go an even longer way.

Like perhaps a trip to Honolulu for the Pro Bowl game.

"He's very deserving and, trust me, no one knows that more than me," said St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner, who now rates Knight as his No. 1 nemesis following the Saints' upset victory last week. "Every time they need a big play, he's always around the ball, and it happens too much to just be coincidence. Knight is a terrific player."

Indeed, the former Southern California defender might rate as the best unknown player in the league, a ball-hawking defender who has earned the respect of his peers around the NFL, if not necessarily the attention of fans outside The Big Easy. Few guys show up more on SportsCenter highlights, it seems, but have so little name recognition.

But it is Knight, 26, whom ESPN.com selected to captain its "All-Unsung" team, a squad comprised of outstanding but unheralded veterans including only one player (Atlanta quarterback Chris Chandler) who has ever been to the Pro Bowl.

Through six games this season, Knight has 26 tackles, one sack, five interceptions and three fumble recoveries, establishing himself as the linchpin player in a still-questionable New Orleans secondary. It marks the fourth time in five seasons he has at least five interceptions, and he still has 10 games to top his career-best six thefts in 1998.

Not bad for a classic "tweener" who played the hybrid "rover" position at USC -- equal parts linebacker and safety -- but whose pedestrian 40-yard time made him more suspect than prospect in 1997. Teams backed away from drafting Knight because they didn't know what position to project him at: a linebacker too small to make plays or a safety too slow to run to the ball.

Looking back, a lot of talent evaluators must be kicking themselves now, because Knight, signed as a free-agent afterthought, has been more productive than most of the safeties who were chosen in the '97 lottery. Of the 27 safeties selected that year, only Green Bay star Darren Sharper has statistics that compare to Knight's, and just Kim Herring of the Rams can be considered in the same class as Knight and Sharper. Nearly half the safeties in that '97 draft aren't in the league anymore.

"I was supposed to be one of those guys, someone who was just camp (fodder), and who wouldn't make it," said Knight, who earned a starting job by the fifth game of his rookie season and has become a fixture in the New Orleans defensive backline. "But I figured I had one chance, that I had to make the most of it, and I did."

What the former Saints regime saw in Knight was a player who simply possessed that innate knack for being around the football. Current secondary coach Rick Venturi, who was on the former staff as well, recalled watching videotape and seeing Knight turn up in frame after frame. While he didn't have the so-called "measureables," Knight was simply too intriguing to pass on as a bargain basement free agent.

	“	I was supposed to be one of those guys, someone who was just camp (fodder), and who wouldn't make it. But I figured I had one chance, that I had to make the most of it, and I did. ”
		— Sammy Knight

In his first training camp, he struggled while playing his new position, uncomfortable with being so far off the line of scrimmage. But his footwork, particularly in reverse, improved dramatically over the first month of camp. And just as in college, he was always the last one to crawl out of the pile after the ball had been on the ground.

That trait certainly hasn't changed, although Knight remains at a loss to explain his skills for being around nearly every loose ball, for always being in the correct deep zone when a quarterback makes an overthrow.

Over the last two years, Knight has improved his ability to close on the ball, and while he will never be a standout single-coverage defender, not many safeties really are. Venturi pointed out this week that a true measure of Knight's quickness would be to time him in a 37- or 38-yard dash, because that is a more realistic gauge of his competitive speed.

"It's just something he was born with," said Saints linebacker Darrin Smith.

Not to be overlooked is Knight's ability as a physical tackler. One opposing tight end joked last year that "when you're hit by Knight, you end up in a daze," a rather clever play on words to describe his aggressiveness. Still, it is his uncanny ability to create takeaways that has thrust Knight into the consciousness of offensive coordinators around the league.

Teams now have to devise strategies in an effort to influence him, to move him away from the ball, and to finesse him off the play.

Through the first 68 games of his career, including 63 starts, Knight was responsible for 29 takeaways. He has 22 interceptions and seven fumble recoveries, and at least a third of those combined takeaways have led to turnarounds in games. That includes a couple of interceptions during the Saints' improbable 25-point third quarter last week at St. Louis. Knight already stands fourth on the Saints' all-time interceptions list.

"Some players are just drawn to the football, or vice versa, and he's one of them," former New Orleans general manager Billy Kuharich, the man responsible for drafting Knight, once said. "You can't explain it, because it just happens; it's a gift."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.