Lofton has NO Super Bowl rings.
Monk has 3.
Monk was the first wide reciever in NFL history to catch 100+ passes in a season. (Yeah I know there was a guy who caught over a 100 passes for the Houston Oilers in one season, but that was back in the 1960’s when Houston was a member of the AFL, so that doesn’t count.
But this is the best:rolleyes: part. Lofton’s playing longevity apparently worked in his favor, while Monk’s worked against him.
Explain *that *to me.
There is NO pro-sports hall of fame more bogus than the NFL HOF.
Outrageous! Art Monk was a fantastic player, who at one time held the record for most receptions (now currently 5th, with 940.) James Lofton has only 764 receptions (though he does have more yards.)
Monk had grace, incredible hands, and three Superbowl rings. Monk played what, 11 or 12 seasons? He had a great career and should have been inducted.
And there be the crux of the issue. Catching 940 passes certainly is impressive, but not when your whole career is based on the 8-yard hook route.
And what’s all this moaning about Monk having 3 Super Bowl rings? So what? Does that mean EVERYONE on those Redskin teams deserves more consideration, just because they won the big game? Football is a team sport, but the HOF is an individual honor. If I had to put a team together, I’d take Lofton in his prime over Monk. And so did the HOF.
Well, nobody’s trying to enshrine Timmy Smith or Mark Rypien or Doug Williams (though Williams may find his own way into a hall if he ever gets a chance to move up from Grambling). But Monk has not just the rings, but a consistent career of excellent play. So what if his catches were all short yardage? That’s the system he played in, he just wasn’t assigned those long post routes all the time, though the Redskins sure did use those to advantage (see the 35 point 2nd quarter against the Broncos.) Monk had good hands, ran good routes, and racked up a bunch of receptions, and was a critical part of the success of one of the alltime great teams stretched over half a dozen years. Thanks to Lawrence Taylor, Monk played under a string of mediocre quarterbacks and he made them seem like Superbowl heroes. Nobody who threw to Monk after Theismann went down was ever as good as Kelly, or even Lynn Dickey in 83-84.
He deserves the hall, definitely above Lofton.
Your logic is circular. If he got those catches because of a “system” then arguably, it wasn’t his talent that made him great- it was the system! How much do you wanna bet this is exactly what the HOF voters thought? The 8-yard hook is the easiest route to run and catch in all of football, on any level. All Monk did is run easy routes and make short gains for for a lot of years. Perhaps the HOF voters (who, it can be assumed, really know their football) are aware that it is a lot harder to catch those deep post patterns, whatever “system” a guy played in. Jerry Rice caught a lot of short balls, but those aren’t what NFL Films includes when showing his career highlights. Instead they show him catching one in stride across the middle and going the distance, or running a ten yard pattern, juking somebody, and leaving the entire secondary in his dust.
By comparison, Monk was little more than a glorified possession receiver, which is one of the biggest reasons his career lasted so long to begin with.
OK then, what’s a “possession receiver”?
Average yards per completion:
Jerry Rice: 14.8
Art Monk: 13.5
Sure, Rice’s average is better, but the argument here isn’t, “Is Art Monk as good as Jerry Rice?” (If that’s what it took to get into the HOF, it would be nearly devoid of receivers.) But does The Great Jerry Rice leave Monk in the dust, here? By no means.
I had the good fortune to see just about all of Art Monk’s career with the Redskins. Since the era of Jurgensen, Charley Taylor, and Bobby Mitchell, only Darrell Green among Redskins has been more outstanding at any of the “skill positions” than Monk. Having Monk as the #1 receiver made it possible for a whole bunch of WRs (Charlie Brown, Gary Clark, Ricky Sanders, etc.) to excel as the #2 and #3 men, and made all his QBs better. Monk was to the Redskins what Eddie Murray was to the O’s of more or less the same period - he was the guy who always went out and got it done. He wasn’t Mr. Highlight Film, like a Rice or a Lofton, but BFD.
Those deep posts may be harder to catch, but what of it? The routes to run are the routes that lead to wins. If those 8-yard patterns are a good winning strategy, then a receiver who can catch the ball in those patterns, year in and year out, almost never dropping the ball, belongs in the HOF, unless such receivers are relatively abundant. They’re pretty rare, really.
Speaking of baseball, it makes as much sense to say a great possession receiver shouldn’t be in that POS in Canton as it makes sense to say a guy who never hit 40 homers in a year shouldn’t be in baseball’s HOF.
Canton is a small town, and being there will never have the cachet of being in Cooperstown. But the town’s a bit smaller without Art Monk in the HoF.
I think Lofton’s enshrinement in the ACLU [Always Causing Legal Unrest] Sports Hall of Shame gave him the edge over Monk:
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/SportsHallofShame/SportsList2.html
I think Monk’s real sin was in not calling more attention to himself while playing. He was never one of those guys who pointed his finger at God, himself, or the other guy after a big catch. He never boasted about who he could beat. He was a professional, played like one, and acted like one. Now, unfortunately, it seems he’s paying a price for it.
I have seen this debated a lot. Two arguments that I’ve seen have really swayed me into my opinion of this situation.
I was listening to, I believe, the Dan Patrick Show and they were talking about this. They were interviewing somebody, I apologize I really don’t remember who, it was an ex-nfl defensive back. They asked him about Monk. He responded that Monk was OK, but their team never ever gameplanned around him. Or treated him any differently than another random receiver. They were much more concerned about (for the life of me, I can’t remember the other receiver they had at the time.) the other receiver on the team. To me that spoke volumes. Here’s this guy, the other team knows is going to get thrown to a lot. Yet, they’re not nearly that scared of him, in fact believe he’s containable. That shows something wrong with his game.
In most aspects of his game, Monk was average. But he had reliable hands, and had a few routes he ran well so he was thrown to a lot. In the end, it really comes down to this. Is it the Hall of Fame, or the Hall of Pretty Darn Good Players.
Forgive the hijack, but the difference between Cooperstown and Canton is that Cooperstown is a lovely town in upstate NY, with the HOF near to a beautiful finger lake, and the football HOF is right next to the hard concrete of not-so-lovely I-77.
As for the Monk/Lofton debate, count me as one who’d take Lofton over Monk. I don’t have the yard after catch figures, but I suspect that Lofton beat Monk pretty badly in that category. Monk was an important cog in the Redskins’ machine, no doubt, but not as important as Jacoby, Riggins, Sanders or whoever Gibbs had at QB that year.
At some point, one has to consider the numbers.
Art Monk’s career rankings:
Fifth in catches.
Ninth in receiving yards.
A mere 27th in receiving TDs. (68 TDs to Lofton’s 75, fwiw.)
Pretty darn good, indeed. And seems to me to be quite comparable with, say, Fred Biletnikoff, another guy who, IIRC, was in the “not exactly feared, but always seemed to be able to get open when necessary” class. And who is in Canton.
I’m all for not watering down the Hall, but sheesh, you aren’t exactly going to water it down by letting guys in with those sorts of stats: a top-5, a top-10, and a top-30 in the three key statistical categories.
[hijack]I’m still mad that the Giants’ 9-time Pro-Bowler Harry Carson isn’t in the Hall of Fame. The guy was the heart of the Giants’ defense during the 1980s and invented the freakin’ Gatorade dump!!![/hijack]
Frankly I’m surprised Lofton got in. He and Monk were great players in their day but I don’t think either one deserves to be in a HOF.
That alone should put him on the permanently ineligible list.
Well, the Gatorade dump wasn’t any worse than “The Wave” (well, maybe it was; The Wave never killed* anyone, so far as I know), but The Wave has passed into history (or into historical trivia, anyway), while the Gatorade Dump unfortunately lives on.
*[sub]Former Rams and Redskins head coach George Allen’s death may have been caused by a Gatorade dump, according to his daughter Jennifer Allen in her book Fifth Quarter.[/sub]
Sanders?
I’m assuming he’s talking about Ricky Sanders, who was the Redskins’ #3 wideout for several years.
So I figured he wasn’t serious. 
Yes, I was referring to Ricky Sanders, the guy who set a then Super Bowl record with 193 receiving yards when the 'Skins beat the Broncos. That serious enough for you?
Monk was excellent, there is no doubt. During his prime the Redskins had 3 great receivers: Monk, Sanders and Gary Clark.
Well, it was only one game, even if that one game happened to be the Hyperbole[sup]TM[/sup].
I mean, check out Timmy Smith’s stats that day. And lifetime. 
I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say Gary Clark and Ricky Sanders were great receivers, even though they were 2/3 of a really top-flight corps of wideouts. My reasoning is that, good as they were in support of Art Monk, neither of them was going to be the #1 WR in a highly-ranked passing attack. Regardless of what whoever may have said on the Dan Patrick show, Monk was the guy who was able to make the catches while drawing more attention than the other WRs, which freed Clark and Sanders to see more single coverage.
As pro-football-reference.com says, “Ricky Sanders is not in the all-time top 50 in any major category.” (Here’s the stats for Monk and Clark, btw; both of them have stats that are way beyond those of Sanders.)