Hall of fame gold jacket finalists announcements

Joey007 said:

I can agree that all of the above listed should since they were LB throughout their careers.

My issue is that nowadays you have more guys who have played both DE and LB, depending on the system they’re in. (Demarcus Ware for example)

Where do we classify guys like Ware in the future?

Click to expand...

Deus Irae said:

The Hall will classify them, I expect. If not, the voters will work it out.

In the end, remember that HOFs are a joke, anyway. Two easy examples of why:

In baseball, the DH is defended to the death by almost every AL beat writer, yet they don't vote them into the HOF because they're "just" DHs.

In football, ST players almost never get it, and players who were great for reasons that aren't quantified (i.e. 3-4 NTs) are at a big disadvantage.

Click to expand...

Deus Irae said:

In the end, remember that HOFs are a joke, anyway. Two easy examples of why:

In baseball, the DH is defended to the death by almost every AL beat writer, yet they don't vote them into the HOF because they're "just" DHs.

In football, ST players almost never get it, and players who were great for reasons that aren't quantified (i.e. 3-4 NTs) are at a big disadvantage.

Click to expand...

RDS11 said:

I get the point you are making, but they are calling it 'Hall Of Fame', not 'Hall of the most dominant players'. That's why Namath is in the Hall Of Fame while there's only one placekicker in (even though placekickers regularly lead the league in scoring).

Click to expand...

Deus Irae said:

So you expect David Tyree to get into the Hall, then?

Click to expand...

Tunescribe said:

@KontradictioN
@AndyJohnson
@PatriotsNumero1Fan

Comparing apples to oranges isnt easy. LT's strengths were countered by running right at him. When you dropped back to pass, or worse, tried to run away from him, LT was able to use his size and speed to perfection. When teams ran straight at him he was neutralized, as good as he could be.

Butkus, on the other hand, was ahead of his time in that he was bigger than MLBs of the era and faster than MLBs at the time. But Butkus was a master intimidator before, during, and after a play. Not only that, but his ability to diagnose a play at the snap of the ball was unmatched, even in today's NFL. In an era that was run-dominant, Butkus dominated. In an era where the five-step pass drop was dominant, Taylor was dominant.

There isn't anyone close to either of them as far as the position of linebacker goes, and to compare the greatest OLB of all time (Taylor) to the greatest MLB of all time (Butkus) is an unfair test. BUT, I'll take the best MLB over the best OLB every time.

I saw them both play. Taylor's performances benefited from a strong surrounding cast on Parcells' defenses. Butkus had help from nobody.

View attachment 19051

Click to expand...

Mack Herron said:

Good times.

Click to expand...

AndyJohnson said:

I’m not knocking Butkus. But his team had little success and that really is a consideration.

I disagree that you could neutralize taylor by running at him. Taylor was great at the point of attack. He was just so relentless that it was worse to run away from him because he would make a play when you never accounted for a blocker for him.
Taylor controlled games and dictated to offenses. He had a couple of good players with him but hardly an all star cast. He made a lot of those players better.

In the end it’s a preference and neither answer is wrong. (Only the one that puts Ray Lewis in their class)

Click to expand...

Tunescribe said:

No major disagreement here other than Butkus was comparatively stronger at the point of attack and I don't think overall team success should be a factor swinging in only one direction when evaluating individual performance. LT had some studs around him that definitely enabled his game; Butkus had two guys at most who could be considered average and the rest were awful (he made the Pro Bowl on a 1-13 team in 1969).

Click to expand...

AndyJohnson said:

I value team success. I’m not going to get into comparing teammates of guys 20 years apart as a backdoor way of assessing a great player, I just don’t believe in that approach.

Click to expand...

Deus Irae said:

Team success is basically useless when you're talking about trying to quantify individual merit for something like the HOF, because you can't quantify it over the long term, and you can only make the weakest of guesses at the impact of the player by using it. It becomes the equivalent of "but nobody worked harder".

Or, to put it another way: we can say that Brady down to Cassel was worth about 5 games from 2007-2008, but that doesn't mean we can say with certainty that he was worth 5 games every season.

Click to expand...

AndyJohnson said:

You can’t quantify “better lb” any more than you can team success.

Click to expand...

Deus Irae said:

Of course you can. That's not even debatable.

Click to expand...

AndyJohnson said:

How do you quantify better lb accurately?
Numbers to compare lb to lb apples to apples do not exist.

Click to expand...

AndyJohnson said:

You can’t quantify “better lb” any more than you can team success.

Click to expand...

AndyJohnson said:

My opinion is that team success is a factor. Saying QBs with equivalent statistics to Brady without the team success are as good doesn’t jive with me. If you quantify QBs without accounting for team success you are putting manning and Marino right up there with Brady and dropping Montana below them.

Click to expand...

Deus Irae said:

You're deliberately misreading what I wrote. Let's not keep going down that road.

Click to expand...

Individual merit can be analyzed by looking at (for a LB) tackles, sacks, passes broken up, etc.... It's not going to be perfect, and most statistics require context, but it's much more than you can use for that same LB in an attempt to actually measure his impact on team success.

Click to expand...

That's not debatable. Let's leave it there and move on.

Click to expand...

Tunescribe said:

Of course you can.

Click to expand...

So you would downgrade Butkus and others like him for lack of team success over which they had no control? When you're talking assessment of individual player performance, team success should factor in as little as possible.

Click to expand...