The truth is Namath is in the hall of fame, and is revered and respected by football historians, players, and fans. You base your argument on stats, but, as stated many times, Joe Willie is not in the HOF based on his on field play alone - he is in for what he ment to the NFL as it progressed to the #1 entertainment in the country. He is in a big way responsible for billions of dollars being made and shared by owners, players, and teams. You've got to get off the stat argument. It's not the sole reason he is a HOFer.
I agree and also he played in an era where the rules were not setup to allow the offenses to dominate like they do in today's football. Most of the modern stats are inflated because of rule changes. No-one can take away the fact that Joe Willie was the first to put up 4000 yards in a season. This in an era when NO-ONE else was doing that.
How can you get tired after watching what the man did for this franchise, especially when he was here back in 1968 http://www.hulu.com/watch/123697/americas-game-1968-new-york-jets#x-4,vepisode,1,0 America's game: NYJ Super Bowl 3 (The whole video is there)
The man wore a white fur coat on the sideline during a game. He was dating the hottest actress in Hollywood, Ann Margaret. He was drinking his ass off. Doing commercials like Peyton Manning does now. Movies. He starred in a movie. He was so ingrained in society from being on TV in games, in magazine ads, TV commercials that he could get a starring role in a real Hollywood film without being able to act. All that and he won the biggest game ever played. NFL football is now the biggest thing there is - maybe all because of that game.He sat at the pool and guaranteed he would beat a 16 point favorite. You dont even see that today. If the Colts were favored by 16 points over you and someone came up to you with a mike you go.... Uhhh, Peytons really great and we just uhhhh hope to contain him cuz he's gonna get his points... Namath was like F YOU we're gonna beat these A-HOLES! Is he a hall of famer? Who gives a shit? He had bad knees and was hung over, plus the whole league was jealous of him because of the money and attention so they came after his head on every play. Did you see that play at the beginning of the Americas Game video above. I counted three head shots on one play by the Raiders when Namath scrambled. Give the guy a break.
The truth is there are alot of players that are in the Hall that do not belong. I think Joe belongs for all he meant off the field but if it was stricly based on on-field performance there's no way he'd be in. I don't base it just on stats, I use stats as part of my evaluation. He has terrible #s and only led his teams to two playoff apps. You need one or the other and most great ones have both while he has neither. You are agreeing w/ me saying what he meant to the game off the field but you are not presenting a case why he should be in based on what he did on the field.
173 TDs 220 Ints, this man is one of the top 100 football players ever? Maybe to the Jets fans but that's about it. I guess the hype surrounding him made him seem better than he was. Kinda like how Ali kept saying he was the greatest. You tell people something enough times, eventually they will believe it.
You're making the mistake of comparing his stats to those of modern day players. What you have to do is look at the numbers of his contemporaries and you'll see that he was one of the best of his time. Terry Bradshaw threw 212 TD's to 210 INT's in his career. Now does this man also not belong in the hall of fame? Go to http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/ and look at the numbers for each season pre '72. In 1968, the #1 passing (San Diego Chargers) team had a 47% completion rate. Today that's bottom of the barrel. It was a different game back then. DB's were allowed to beat on a receiver until the ball was in the air, the head slap was legal, things that today would get you penalized (suspended, fined) were happening on every single play. It was a different world and you have to understand that in order to appreciate what Joe Namath accomplished.
1965-76 Jets with Joe Namath in the starting lineup: 60-61-4 without Namath in the starting lineup: 14-29-0
When looking at stats for passing it's important to look at a couple factors, namely major rule changes that occured starting in 1977 that opened up the passing game, ALOT. and there are a couple stats that really highlight this. No QB who played most of his career before 1978 threw for more than 197.6 yards per game over their career (that 197.6 average incidentally is Joe Namaths, fran Tarkenton is second in that grouping at 191.1 yards per game average). By comparison there are 39 Quarterbacks with higher yards per game average, all but one began their career in 1979 or later, that one player would be Dan Fouts who never threw for more than 2500 yards between 1973 and 1978...he didn't "blossom" until after the rule chanes, coincdentally his first big year was 1978 at 2999 yards and then 1979 at 4082 yards, in a 16 games season to boot. To further illustrate this abit. For players who played more than 1/2 their career before 1978 the lowest interception Percentage over their career belongs to Roger Staubach at 3.7%. The Great Johnny U was at 4.9%...for the record there are 88 Quaterbacks who played the majority of their career after 1977 with lower interception percentages with the lowest being Aaron Rodgers at 1.8%. For the record Namath was at 5.8% which would put him at 185th on the all time list but 26th on the list when compared to players who played the majority of their games between 1955 and 1977. Now when passing yards shoot up at a clear point of time and interceptions go down substantially at that same point in time (1977-1979) and there are a series of rule changes in that specific period geared to advance the passing game, you have clearly decisive evidence of how much the game changed into a much more passing friendly league. and this needs to be factored in when comparing stats between players from the before and after periods of time, not just Namath but Unitas, Starr, Dawson, Tarkenton and others. But here's something to consider when comparing say Unitas to Namath, Namath would throw one more interception per 100 attempts than Unitas and 2 more interceptions than Staubach on those same terms, but Namath was also putting up substantially more yardage per game than either of them over the course of their careers. If you figure say an average of 33.33 pass attempts per game that's about one extra interception over unitas every 3 games played and 2 interceptions over Staubach every 3 games played. But Namath gains 7 yards more a game on average than Unitas, probably not worth it there, but gains 25 yards a game more than Staubach, probably worth it there. Not bad for a man with two knee surgeries before playing his first game before knee surgery techniques were perfected. Btw the rule changes that most helped the passing game. the first was actually 1974 when they moved the goal posts to the back of the endzone, it made middle of the field redzone passing ALOT easier as the goalposts acted kind of like a 12th defender, though it could be used as a pick if done very carefully. 1977 defenders allowed to make contact with a receiver only once, the head slap is outlawed (the Deacon jone rule), 1978 contact was limited to within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage, Pass blocking rules changed to allow extended arms and open hands. 1979 the infamaous in the grasp rule and the beginning of the era of rules protecting QB's. There were other rule changes during those years that opened the passing game up, but those are the prime ones. Before 1977 DB's could make all the contact with a receiver they wanted to (Try running a timed pattern in those circumstances) wherever on the field. that rule set alone made a huge difference, add in giving edges to offensive linemen pass blocking and taking away some defensive moves and protecting the QB from injury and you have a whole different ballgame. If there's one knock on Namath's game that's truly deserved over his career, it's his low TD% compared to his peers from the same era. I often wonder what type of numbers Namath would have put up under todays rules and with Todays surgical techiques to repair his knees after college. I also dream what Unitas's and Tarkenton's numbers would have been like.
