All the real solutions to this (besides ramping up the physical threats) are going to involve RP, really - highlighting the areas he hasn't focused so much on. So there you go. 
Definitely a good point. My group alternates weekends between SR and a World of Darkness game. In the WoD game, we're all new at whatever we're doing. We started play as mortals, and then depending on RP elements we changed into our flavor of boogie-man (I became a werewolf, some became vampires, others stayed hunters, etc). As a newly-turned wolf I decided I wanted to be the alpha wolf of Atlanta (since I had killed the previous one, his bite into my shoulder triggered the change), and spent XP into being a badass warrior that crushed whatever the GM threw at me. My only weakness? Most everything else. In our game now I'm relatively socially inept (even though I'm about to attempt to rally all the wolves in Atlanta under one pack), and fairly susceptible to the "influences" of our enemies (demons representing the seven sins, threatening apocalypse and whatnot) which for the sake of SR works similarly to Control Thoughts.
Point is, if you spend a lot into one aspect of a character, you're leaving yourself vulnerable in all others. Is that a bad thing? Not always. My SR group is 7 players, so each of them is pretty specialized but they have enough bases covered to watch each others' rears. The mage can't take a hit, nor can the technomancer. Our samurai can be lewd and crude, and our weapon specialist is the quiet type; neither is particularly good with negotiations. We did have a troll adept though, who focused his whole character concept on being the tank of the team. Full auto fire might not have ever done any physical damage, but he was plenty battered and bruised (stunned, if you will?) after his intimidation tactics only succeeded in making some poor ganger piss his pants and hold the trigger of his AK-97.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm rambling at this point. You get the idea :p
