The full list is:
Derrick Brooks
Ray Guy
Claude Humphrey
Walter Jones
Andre Reed
Michael Strahan
Aeneas Williams
I’m really pleased to see Guy get his due.
I’m also glad to see Guy get his due, but I can’t figure out what possible justification there is for keeping Bettis out. He’s only the 6th highest rusher in league history. It’s not like he’s a dubious or borderline candidate.
Many people disagree with you.
I don’t, by the way. But there are many Bettis Bashers out there that will break down his career and point to every negative. So even if he is the 6th leading rusher in league history, many will point to his lack of rushing titles or scoring titles… Or they will point to his being a one dimentional back who came out of the game in obvious passing situations and his 4.0 yards/attempt.
Bettis deserves to get in and i believe he will. I also believe that if he played for any other team in the league, he would be in already. But there are many who think that there are too many Steelers in the hall already. It’s a ludicrous argument, but there it is.
As for Ray Guy, I am not exactly excited. Yes, he was a great punter. No question. But HOF worthy? I don’t know. I guess if one pure punter was going to get in, it would be Guy.
Looking at the rest of the list, the one guy I am happy to see get in is Andre Reed. He certainly deserved to be in the HOF (IMO, anyway), and I thought he would get passed over.
I don’t recognize a couple of names, so I am going to look them up. I really hope they are guys voted in by the veterans committee, because i will feel like an idiot if I don’t recognize a HOF player from the last 20-25 years.
Glad to see Brooks, Strahan, and Williams get in.
Ray Guy, eh, ok, fine. I was never too vexed about the failure to include punters, but I can see the argument.
I’m a little surprised they took Andre Reed instead of Marvin Harrison, but maybe there’s some of that “not on the first ballot” business going on. I also would’ve taken Tim Brown ahead of Reed. I mean, if Brown gets dinged by the perception that he was merely a good player who stuck around for a long time, Reed isn’t exactly the kind of counter-example who should be slotted in ahead, you know? He had a similar kind of career, except his numbers weren’t as good and he achieved them in a better and more fast-paced offense.
Finally, I hope Will Shields gets in soon. The Chiefs had the best offense in football for about half a decade, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the two most important players on that offense were Shields and Willie Roaf. They took a pair of relatively ordinary RBs, Priest Holmes and Larry Johnson, and guided them to historically great seasons, year after year.
IMO Strahan benefited from NY. He’s extremely overrated to me. Otherwise, great class.
Agree with this. I don’t think he gets in if he doesn’t play for the Giants, certainly not without waiting a while.
I wonder why WR’s have such a tough time getting in? Tim Brown should be in, unless there is something about him that I just don’t know. But if you look at his stats, not to mention all of the stiffs that played QB while he was playing, I think Brown should walk into the hall.
I have a feeling the reason Marvin Harrison hasn’t been elected has something to do with his personal life and off-the-field issues he’s had, but that’s just a guess.
An underwhelming bunch, on the whole, though all but one strike me as perfectly deserving.
If there HAS to be a punter in the Hall of Fame, I’m not at all convinced it should be Ray Guy. MANY guys have better averages, better net averages, and better inside-the-20 rates. Guy was very good, but he wasn’t notably better than his main rival, Jerrel Wilson of the KC Chefs.
If Ray Guy is a Hall of Famer, so are Shane Lechler, Rich Camarillo and Rohn Stark.
Really? **Four *time 1st Team All-Pro, 5th on the all time sacks list, just as good against the run as he was against the pass, holder of the single-season sack record (even if he should have had “only” 21.5 sacks that year), and an integral part of both an NFC and an NFL Champion. If he doesn’t deserve to be in, you’re asking for a very small Hall of Fame.
- => I don’t have my cite handy, but the Giants generally had the lowest or near the lowest percentage of runs inside/outside the RT.
Varlos-BIG shock you’re from NYC. He benefited certainly from plaing in NYC, not to mention an epic SB choke job.
I am a Giants fan, that’s true, and possibly biased. That doesn’t change the validity of anything I said, though, and it’s beyond weird to denigrate his championship as merely the result of a “choke job.” The single biggest reason the Giants won that game was that they were able to generate excellent pressure with a four man rush, and Strahan had a very good game. Besides, the Giants and Pats played *two *very close games a few weeks apart, suggesting that, while the Patriots were surely the better team, the Giants were a very tough matchup for them, and the result was neither a fluke nor a choke.
You actually believe an 18-0 team losing to a 12-7 team is NOT a choke? That Giants team is easily the worst team to win the SB.
I see, never mind.
How do you benefit from playing in NY? How many undeserving players have gotten into the HOF from the Giants or Jets?
He was caught in a transition zone between rule changes-when the league moved the goal posts from the goal line to the end line after his rookie year, that took a lot of FG attempts out of the league when it was 4th down and the ball was on the opposing ~35-45 yard line-and the Raider’s kickers of the time (c.f. George Blanda) were notoriously short-ranged on top of that. Add in the excellent Raider’s offense, and it meant that the goal line he was kicking towards was often closer than it was for many punters either before him or during his career. Afterwards, kickers in general gained about 5 yards or so of range (along with long range accuracy), and more contemporary guys like Lechler thus benefited.
The inside the 20 thing is more pertinent, given how often he would be punting in such situations.
There’s been a lot written about this in the past few years. The big issue seems to be that, with the growth in the passing game over the past 25-30 years, it’s become harder for the voters to agree on what makes a receiver Hall-worthy. The stats have become so inflated, compared to previous generations, and there seems to be very little consensus on how to evaluate receivers from the modern era.
It doesn’t help that there’s been this logjam of receivers from the 1980s and 1990s who were clearly very good (Cris Carter, Art Monk, Andre Reed, Tim Brown), as well as other very good receivers who are now showing up on the ballot.
Joe Namath?
I will give you that one. However, one example from a long time ago does not make it a thing.
I very much agree that there is a glut of good recievers eligable now. The voters almost never elect two players of the same position in the same year.
I’ll bet Tim Brown will get his turn next year or the one after. I’m delighted Andre Reed finally made it.
Maybe I’m biased having been a Bills season ticket holder for years and saw Reed take a pounding over and over again by his willingness to go up the middle and make clutch grabs knowing he was going to get creamed when he came down.
Without him I really doubt the Bills would have made it to their four consecutive Superbowls.
Fair enough, but even so, look at some stats.
If Ray Guy was as great as reputed he should have led the NFL in punting perennially. So, how many times DID he lead the league in punting? Three times. His contemporary and chief rival, Jerrel Wilson of the Chiefs, had the league’s best average FOUR times.
What was Guy’s career average? 42.4 yards, which is dang good. But was he head and shoulders above his contemporaries? No! Jerrel Wilson averaged 43.0 yards a punt.
In his best year, 1975, Ray Guy average 43.8 yards a punt. Again, dang good. But it sure wasn’t a record! LOTS of earlier punters had better season averages than that.
Ray Guy was a very, very good punter. But my feeling is, if you’re going to induct a pure punter at all, it ought to be someone who shattered records, or who changed techniques, who was worlds better than all his contemporaries and most of the guys who came close behind him.
Ray Guy wasn’t such a punter. In fact, I can’t think of any pure punter who was THAT much better than his contemporaries.
astorian- Don’t know if you were trying to bash Guy or praise Wilson. If the former, I think winning rings was the capper. If the latter, great job.