Why Reed but not Brown or Carter? I’m having trouble seeing a basis for preferring him.
Between Brown, Carter and Reed I would give Brown the slight nod as he was also a pretty great punt returner. Their career receiveing stats are very similar.
R Yds Y/R TD
Brown 1094 14934 13.7 100
Carter 1101 13899 12.6 130
Reed 951 13198 13.9 87
Formatting not so good.
Faulk-most versatile back on ballot
Reed-Great receiver who played in 4 straight SB (wasn’t his fault he came up empty)
Dawson-Top lineman who opened holes for great running game. heir to Webster
Sabol-His hightlights made the NFL the national pasttime. (aside: Facenda needs to go in too)
And the five selections were:
Sanders, Dent, Faulk, Sharpe, and Sabol.
Well I had three of five, and I can’t argue too much against the other two (Dent and Faulk).
astorian:
As a group, maybe not, but an individual writer can only mark 10 names on his ballot. Anyone know what’s the maximum number of people who can get 75% of the writers’ votes, assuming that every writer wrote 10 names?
Richard Dent really surprises me. He had the benefit of being part of such a great defense and, according to friends of mine who are Bears fans, he had a reputation for taking plays off from time to time.
The other selections are not too surprising. Faulk is deserving, but before Martin, Carter, Brown, Reed?
Assume 100 writers; each player needs 75 votes to win, and there are a total of 1,000 votes available.
1,000/75 = 13 1/3, so a maxiumum of 13 players could be inducted.
Dent was very much like Julius Peppers. His impact was far greater than that of your stereotypical DE pass rush specialist. He rushed the passer exceptionally well, but also was an elite run defender often devoured multiple blockers like a DT to free up the LBs for Ryan’s 46 blitzing schemes. He sometimes lined up inside the tackle in a 5 or 3 technique. He basically never was moved backwards off his spot or out of a hole.
Dent was guilty of taking plays off when they went to the opposite side of the field, he wasn’t great at backside pursuit (something Peppers does well) and because of his massive size and awkward body type he looked kinda lazy. Of course the rest of the defenses he played on were so talented that he could pretty safely assume that the play was going to be made. It’s been discussed a ton here in Chicago and many of his contemporaries has basically said that taking plays off was commonplace in that era. The mentality was a little different then than it is now and very few players came off the field for rest the way they do now on the defensive front. Resting on plays was considered a necessity, Dent just seemed to do it a little more shamelessly than most.
As for Faulk, yes, absolutely he belongs in ahead of those guys. He was one of the best running backs ever and changed the position. He was dominant in the postseason and has a ring. Those other guys probably all deserve to be in, but Faulk is clearly in a different class than they are. Martin, Carter, Reed and Brown can’t say that they were ever the best player in the league at their position while they played. In some ways they were under-the-radar compilers. Faulk however was arguably the best RB in the league for several of his seasons and often the best player in the league.
Tom Scud:
But they aren’t 1000 equal votes; each block of 10 must name 10 different players. Can 75 votes for 13 different players be distributed in such a fashion?
In theory, yes. (In practice, that would require a large amount of coordination). I can actually do it with 4 ballots:
ballot 1
a b c d e f g h i j
ballot 2
d e f g h i j k l m
ballot 3
a b c g h i j k l m
ballot 4
a b c d e f j k l m
j gets in unanimously, every other letter gets 3/4 of the votes.
Good thinking, thanks.