There are many things that go into the conversation when discussing whether a player should be honored in the Hall of Fame. While listening to a podcast the other day an analyst said "A player should be in the Hall of Fame if you can't tell the story of the NFL during the time period he played without him". I've never heard of this idea before and thought it was an interesting point. What's your opinion on this idea? What do you think is most important when discussing who should be in the Hall of Fame?
Agreed, and that's going to be important in this new passing league NFL where numbers are going to be inflated. They have to be someone who made continuous impact on the teams they were on and played their position at an elite level.
With that in mind, does anyone stick out who might not pass this new standard? I still have to think that Brady, Manning, Brees, and Roethlisberger end up there under just about any standard.
Every HOFer's legacy is different. Joe Montana is widely regarded as the best QB to ever play the game, but his stats are kind of pedestrian, especially by today's standards. He never threw for 4,000 yards in a season. Other guys, like Marino, were statistical monsters but didn't win championships. I like the OP's quote: "A player should be in the Hall of Fame if you can't tell the story of the NFL during the time period he played without him." That's a cool way to look at it.
This is true, and explains guys like Peyton and Brady. What other players can't you omit when telling the story of the NFL during the 2000s?
Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Devin Hester, Troy Polamalu, Drew Brees, Randy Moss, and Adam Vinatieri come to mind. I do think this is too high a bar, by the way - by this standard I'm not sure I'd include Tony Gonzalez, even though he's clearly the best TE of at least the past 25 years. And what about Larry Fitzgerald? He's been monumentally unimportant in his career because of the team he's been on, other than one year, and Kurt Warner gets the accolades for that one.
LaDainian Tomlinson. Other than the team he played for, he will go down as one of the greatest offensive players in history; he could still go on to score more TDs than any other RB ever, he's only 15 scores behind Emmitt Smith.
There are a lot of top receivers from the past that are not in the HOF yet, and their numbers just don't match up to the guys retiring lately, like Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce, Randy Moss, Terrell Owens (At least they should retire). Will they be victims of playing in a differetn era?
Tony Gonzalez has to be a yes. He is second all time in receptions and thats including wide recievers. No way to Larry, too soon to judger and yes way to Warner. Warner was a great quarterback, not one of the best but led the greatest show on turf which was huge in the History of the NFL. I also think his story is something that should be in the NFL as well.
Randy Moss and TO are a definite in my book. Isaac Bruce and Holt, not so much. Bruce is still ahead of holt if you were to rank them off of pure longevity.
So you want to include Devin Hester, but you're not sure about Tony Gonzalez? That's crazy. I know Hester broke return records and all, but Tony broke like every tight record I can think of. Plus, (like mentioned earlier) outside of Jerry Rice he has more receptions than anybody and he's selected to the Pro Bowl almost every year.
If you actually read the post you'll see that that's exactly my point. I explicitly said that Gonzalez was clearly the best tight end of the past 25 years (so he obviously deserves to be in the Hall of Fame), yet you can easily "write the history of the NFL for the decade" without his name, since he's only been on 3 teams that won more than 10 games in his career (and one was his rookie year, when he was nothing special), and has been on teams that played a total of 4 playoff games, all of them losses. If he had never played a down in the NFL nothing substantial would have changed at all. On the other hand, if you are going to discuss special teams in the last 10 years or so, there are only 3 names that need be mentioned: Adam Vinatieri, Devin Hester, and Mike Westhoff. Everyone else is interchangeable.
He played basketball at Berkeley, but was only mediocre, while being an All-American in football. There are plenty of players who played two varsity sports, so that hardly makes him noteworthy. Antonio Gates was the guy who never played football in college (in fact, he left Michigan State because Nick Saban didn't want to let him play basketball) and became a top tight end in the NFL.
I think this is due to the lack of respect the tight end position gets in regards to votes. Tony Gonzalez is arguably better than all the tight ends in the HOF right now, all 8 of them, and not all of them have Lombardi trophies. You cant talk about the tight end position in the 2000's without mentioning Gonzalez's name. Also there are also plenty of other players in the HOF who played on crappy underachieving teams and they still got voted in
Montana actually led the NFC in passing yards in 1982. Also, he was a conference or league leader in all of the following categories at least once- pass completions, completion percentage, yards per pass, touchdown passes, passer rating. So he did have nice statistics. Yes, Marino had some monster stats, but Montana, all in all, actually had better stats. An argument can be made that Marino peaked at age 23 or 25. In my opinion his best years were 1984 and 1986. From 1987-99, he was like a better version of a prime Drew Bledsoe- you know, high volume passing, a QB equivalent of a first basemen who hits 40 homers a year and bats .265. Ollie Matson, Sonny Jurgensen, Jimmy Johnson, and O.J. Simpson are a few Hall of Famers who did not play in many playoff games. Matson actually wasn't in any, if I recall correctly. But, for the most part, you are correct. A Hall of Famer needs to have been "important" and to become important a player usually needs to have done something good in the playoffs or (if talking about offensive linemen in particular) have been part of a good team for a long time. There will be exceptions. If the Cardinals suck for the next 8 years but Fitzgerald stays there and still plays great, he will be a Hall of Famer. His magnificent performance in the '08 postseason will be cited as his greatest accomplishment. That was definitely Hall of Fame-worthy. 30-546-7 in four games. The only guy close to that was Jerry Rice in '88 (21-409-6 in three games). The argument can be made that Hester is the best PR of all-time. He does have the TD record. Will he be inducted? That's tough to say. Some people still say Billy Johnson and Rick Upchurch were better punt returners than Hester. To me, it is between Upchurch and Hester. I'm not even sure Johnson would be #3 in my book because cases can be made for Brian Mitchell and Deion Sanders. Upchurch was a better scrimmage player than Hester. He had 954 scrimmage yards in 1979. Either both should be in the PFHOF someday or neither should be in. I would not find it fair if one was in and the one was never enshrined. As for Vinatieri, yeah, he made a few big FGs in the postseason. Does that mean he should be the 2nd pure kicker elected to the Hall? I don't think so. I do not believe Vinatieri was better than Andersen, Anderson, Lowery, Stover, or Hanson. But make a huge kick in the snow in the tuck game (possibly best FG ever) and win two Super Bowls with FGs at the end of the game and it'll give boners to electors like Peter King. The "fame" aspect and big game kicks are what will get Vinatieri elected, if he does get elected. He certainly will not receive enshrinement based upon totality of his career because there have been at least a half dozen better regular season kickers than Vinatieri. Moss is a no-brainer selection. However, I would not be shocked if he has to wait one year. There might be some voters who vote him down based upon his poor conduct through the years and his admittance to taking plays off (read: not being a team guy). Owens will definitely wait at least one year. There's no way he will be a first ballot selection and it's all his own fault for being an asshole. Bruce and Holt are extremely close. I betcha if you polled Rams fans, it would be close to a 50/50 split as to who was the better player. Football fun sport, make good watch on TV, ratings bonanza. Hall of Fame fun talk, message board. I don't think Gonzalez is better than Mackey or Ditka, but he might be better than the other ones. Jackie Smith was a complete tight end like Mackey and Ditka, so he might be 3rd or 4th. Winslow, Newsome, and Sharpe were not considered great blockers, much like Gonzalez.
