For this year, Peyton Manning (duh!) and Charles Woodson should be 1st ballot HofFers. I, personally, would put Calvin Johnson in too, but the logjam of WRs might make it unlikely. Still, he was the most dominant, best WR I’ve seen (and that includes Jerry Rice and Randy Moss) at times. The only knocks on him were the shortness of his career (It’s Hall of Fame, not Hall of Longevity) and his injuries (which he played through without bitching too much), neither of which is really that important to me. What is also important is that he also did all he did on one of the worst teams in the NFL. Give him Joe Montana or Tom Brady, and keep him healthy, and he’d definitively be top 3 of all time.
I figure he’s a lock to make it into the HoF, but likely will have to wait past his first year of eligibility. But he’s 10x the receiver Drew Pearson (or any WR on that list for that matter. Cliff Branch? Please.) ever was.
I concur with @Hamlet’s assessment of Calvin Johnson. I saw a lot of him, as the Packers play the Lions twice a season, and not only was he clearly the best player that the Lions had, but he was impossible to cover or stop.
And, while length of career is undoubtedly a factor in some voters’ minds (see Terrell Davis), this isn’t a case where he only played five or six years – Johnson played for nine seasons, and was still a dominant receiver in his last year in the game.
I now realize that the above somewhat contradicts what I had written about Johnson in the OP. I admit that, when I wrote the OP, I was thinking that Johnson had played a few seasons fewer than he actually had.