Can't say I'm a fan of Rivals but it doesn't stand out to me as a particularly bad episode. Not when season seven has about six "Everybody is obsessed with a 1960s crooner holodeck recreation" episodes and a baseball episode.
Neither does Genesis. It's one of those 'Pure scifi' episodes that I think Star Trek does better than most other scifi shows even if they are interchangeable.
Also Fury. Yeah, it doesn't make sense time-travel-wise, but what time travel episode does?