Deion Sanders: Too many people being inducted into the HOF

[bresna]

Three super bowl appearances and his offense had an NFL-historic nickname. If the HOF is a football museum to honor its biggest players and performances and moments, Warner seems to fit the bill IMO.

• Super Bowl champion (XXXIV)

• Super Bowl MVP (XXXIV)

• 2× AP NFL Most Valuable Player (1999, 2001)

• 4× Pro Bowl (1999–2001, 2008)

• 2× First-team All-Pro (1999, 2001)

• Bert Bell Award (1999)

• 2× NFL passing touchdowns leader (1999, 2001)

• 3× NFL completion percentage leader (1999–2001)

• 2× NFL passer rating leader (1999, 2001)

• NFL passing yards leader (2001)

• NEA NFL Most Valuable Player (2008)

• Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year (2008)

• Arizona Cardinals Ring of Honor

• Bart Starr Award (2010)

This does not appear to strengthen the case. It looks like the opposite. Your numbers make it look like he was great in 1999 & 2001. Two great years and you're in?

 

[TommyD4207]

Davis arguably had the best running back peak ever and it directly resulted in two rings. He completely changed the Broncos franchise from a little brother trying to get in the big show to being one of the marquee franchises in the sport.

Obviously with both you are accounting for short peaks. But they changed their franchise with those peaks and made their impact in a big way that few players ever do.

Warner's not a Hall of Famer to me, if the Cardinals don't have their mini-run. He and Larry Fitzgerald were that entire team.

Even so, the sheer numbers hold up against other Hall of Famers, and not even in the 'Fouts/Namath are in' way.

Davis just simply do it long enough. If you're putting him in for 2000 yards in a season, I'm sure they're measuring Jamal Lewis and Chris Johnson's jackets right now. He had 3 elite seasons, 96, 97, 98 - just so happens they had a pretty good QB at the time then too. After Davis, I think it was 5 or 6 running backs ran for over 1000 yards behind that same line. At a position where having 2 or 3 top-notch seasons and then fading into irrelevance is commonplace, I don't understand the fascination. Gale Sayers was a transformational player, and deserves a Hall of Fame spot. Terrell Davis wasn't even the best RB in the league, and wasn't necessarily the best back in his own conference. That's not transformational. That's the product of a PR campaign.

 

[billdog3484]

Link
Deion Sanders: They’re letting too many players into the Hall of Fame

Yep.

I think Bledsoe has a better shot now than he might have had a few years ago if this is the new standard.

drew bledsoe hof i dont think so homie

 

[NormZauchin]

We are becoming a more inclusive society . Soon everyone will be in the hall of fame!

Every kid on the soccer team gets a trophy.

 

[NormZauchin]

It's not that there are too many people being inducted into the HOF (I'm pretty sure NFL is the toughest to get in among the big 4 sports in America), it's that the wrong people are getting in. As mentioned by posters above, guys like Tony Dungy and Terrell Davis are not HOFers. Eli Manning should not be a HOFer either, but he will probably get in down the line just for beating the Patriots.

As someone on another site said, "If beating the Patriots and Brady is the basis for induction into the HOF, then Foles and Flacco deserve a bust."

 

[Nunchucks]

???

Leaving Warner aside for the moment, Davis had 4 healthy seasons. In those 4 seasons:

• 1 MVP
• 2 SBs
• 3x All Pro
• 4 seasons of 1000+ yards rushing, for 6413 total rushing yards
  
• 2000+ yard rushing season
• Over 1000 yards receiving

Other than longevity, why would he miss out?

Um, longevity..

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Warner and Davis...

The late 90s Broncos and then Rams are as close as teams can get to a dynasty in the salary cap era. This was the way it was going and then the Patriots put everything on hold for twenty years. Get ready for a lot of three year "dynasties" with 1-2 Lombardis and then back to mediocrity. That's how the league was supposed to work.

They do not fit the definition of a dynasty.

Lambs got one title, then bumbled it away like Ainge's Celtics, losing a subsequent final and disappearing.

Donkeys cheated the salary cap both fake title seasons. NFL has loved that franchise since 1977 when the media adopted them as their darlings, a year after ignoring the better, real champion Patriots a year earlier.

 

[jmt57]

What I don't get is why isn't Gino Cappelletti or Stanley Morgan aren't in yet.

I was just going to type in the same thing. It's worth repeating.


Gino and Stanley are at bare minimum as deserving as dozens of others that have been voted in, and far more deserving than many that are in the HoF.

Even more baffling than not getting in is how neither were even given any consideration this year, when the number getting in skyrocketed.

How was it that both (as far as I can tell) were not even included in the initial conversation, completely excluded from any debate about their merits?

 

[denverpatsfan]

HOF is a joke. You can say the same for the baseball HOF too.

 

[stinkypete]

If you're going to follow Deion's standard - that hall of famer's should be a "game changing...pay your admission to watch" kind of player, then Warner is a lock. He was the face of the league for a few years, had the most dominant stretch of football as a QB since Marino in the mid-80's.

 

[TheAdultintheRoom]

Every old timer always says it was harder for him. I guarantee you can find documents from before the birth of Christ in which old men lament how the new generation is weak and soft.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Every old timer always says it was harder for him. I guarantee you can find documents from before the birth of Christ in which old men lament how the new generation is weak and soft.

I’ve gotta say, you are killing it today.

 

[Joey007]

Fred Taylor and Corey Dillon > Edgerrin James

Yet neither of those two will ever get any HOF consideration and yet James is about to get forced into the hall by Bill Polian.

Please discuss how right I am.

 

[jmt57]

FWIW, there is an article that discusses those three, plus Shaun Alexander, Jamal Lewis, Roger Craig, Ricky Waters and Roger Craig:

Memos to Fred Taylor, Dillon: Here's why you're not in the Hall

tl;dr version: the author cites the number of Pro Bowls and All-Pro teams, and number of times each led the league in rushing as the reason.

It is funny how on one hand we as football fans collectively cite that being named to the Pro Bowl is meaningless and a popularity/familiarity contest - but then when it comes to the HoF it suddenly ranks of utmost importance. (Second only to keeping your face in the public eye as a football announcer or analyst, of course.)

Are players in the media causing HOF bias?

Playing alongside Peyton with the Colts certainly helps James, as opposed to playing in Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Seattle, St. Louis, etc. With each year that passes the memories of these small market players grows dimmer.

Dillon is likely hurt by the public perception that he was not a team player, and being just one of several running backs to win a super bowl with the Patriots. Taylor may be hurt by being known first and foremost as 'Fragile Fred'.



I'm going to merge this into the other Hall of Fame voting thread ->

 

[Joey007]

FWIW, there is an article that discusses those three, plus Shaun Alexander, Jamal Lewis, Roger Craig, Ricky Waters and Roger Craig:

Memos to Fred Taylor, Dillon: Here's why you're not in the Hall

tl;dr version: the author cites the number of Pro Bowls and All-Pro teams, and number of times each led the league in rushing as the reason.

It is funny how on one hand we as football fans collectively cite that being named to the Pro Bowl is meaningless and a popularity/familiarity contest - but then when it comes to the HoF it suddenly ranks of utmost importance. (Second only to keeping your face in the public eye as a football announcer or analyst, of course.)

Are players in the media causing HOF bias?

Playing alongside Peyton with the Colts certainly helps James, as opposed to playing in Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Seattle, St. Louis, etc. With each year that passes the memories of these small market players grows dimmer.

Dillon is likely hurt by the public perception that he was not a team player, and being just one of several running backs to win a super bowl with the Patriots. Taylor may be hurt by being known first and foremost as 'Fragile Fred'.



I'm going to merge this into the other Hall of Fame voting thread ->

Didn’t Edgerrin have the same problems? He had injury issues.

 

[Lavictoire]

Its getting watered down so to fix it they have to add a new elite wing and move the very best top guys into that area. Of course that will get political and watered down eventually and they will have to add a really, really elite wing to fix that.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

A bunch of those 70s Steelers dynasty players are tremendously overrated. You can see they had all-pro honors when they played with that core group but outside they weren’t even pro bowl players. But are in the Hall of Fame. Meanwhile Richard Seymour was a top-5 defensive player for roughly 10 years, anchored the first wave of the Patriots dynasty, but still hasn’t gotten in.

27 Steelers are are in the Hall and Polamalu will make 28. This is probably the biggest bias/scam for one team in pro sports.

The Steelers franchise has won 6 titles in roughly 90 years. Lol.

 

[VrabelJr]

This is the weakest HOF class that I can recall.

 

[jmt57]

Polamalu, James lead five into Hall Class of '20

Former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu and former Indianapolis Colts running back Edgerrin James lead the five players who were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2020 on Saturday.

They will be joined for enshrinement by former Denver Broncos safety Steve Atwater, former Seattle Seahawks guard Steve Hutchinson and former Rams wide receiver Isaac Bruce.

The five players will be formally announced during Saturday's NFL Honors program Saturday night​

 

[jmt57]

Didn’t Edgerrin have the same problems? He had injury issues.

When it comes to the HoF the facts don't matter; reputations are what counts. Sports writers to this day still refer to Taylor as 'Fragile Fred', while James never had a similar monicker.

For the record James missed 28 games during his 11-year career. In Taylor's first eleven seasons he missed 36 games - but 14 of those were in one season. The blame for Taylor's reputation can be placed on Tom Coughlin, who not only kept Taylor on the roster rather than place him on IR in 2001 - he made him inactive for those 14 games after listing him as 'questionable' on 14 consecutive weekly injury reports, even though there was no way he would play that year.

James also gets the benefit of playing on the same offense as Manning, thus being perceived to being an aid to Peyton's success. Those Indy teams were being broadcast nationally every other week; Jacksonville, not nearly as often.