Who Is, But Maybe Shouldn’t Be, In The Pro Football Hall of Fame?
In the opinion of the author, no member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame is less worthy of the honor than Lynn Swann.
It has been quite interesting over the past two months analyzing the best players at each position who have not yet earned a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It has reaffirmed my belief that there are a heck of a lot of deserving football players who have yet to get a bust in Canton. It also has made me scratch my head over a few of the players that have received football immortality.
Overall, I will say that for the most part, the Hall of Fame voters have done a very good job of selecting top players for the Hall of Fame. While I believe there are as many as two dozen deserving players who have been overlooked, the number of players in the Hall of Fame that I question is significantly less.
In fact, while I planned to have a top 10 list of players in the Hall of Fame that I think you could argue don’t belong, I actually was able to only come up with nine players from the modern era that I really questioned whether they belong in the HOF.
Now, I did not analyze any of the players from the pre-1950 era who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. My reasoning being that the game during that time period and selection process in the early days of HOF is so different than today that trying to argue for or against certain players from the pre-modern era made little sense.
Instead, players had to have played a majority of their careers after 1950 to be considered for this list.
The one player that this rule may have saved was Bob Waterfield, the former Rams quarterback. I have seen a number of articles in recent years questioning if his numbers justified being in the HOF or if he got in primarily because he was married to Jane Russell.
So, here is my list of nine players whose Hall of Fame status I think could be questioned. In some cases it isn’t necessarily that I think they don’t belong, but rather question how they could have been inducted before other players from their era or who played the same position.
However, there are a couple that I think were selected purely because of politics and the “scratch my back” network. I’m sure there will be strong disagreement to some of my choices, but remember, these are my opinions and the great thing about having opinions and living in the United States is that everyone is entitled to one and encouraged to share it.
I have given mine, and now I encourage you to share your thoughts and opinions.
Click Here to read more and see pictures of each player in the top 9.
9. Bob Griese – Miami Dolphins – 1967-1980
8. Fred Dean – San Diego Chargers/San Francisco 49ers – 1975-1985
7. Rayfield Wright – Dallas Cowboys – 1967-1979
6. Dan Dierdorf – St. Louis Cardinals – 1971-1983
5. Frank Gatski – Cleveland Browns – 1946-1957
4. Charlie Sanders – Detroit Lions – 1968-1977
3. Roger Wehrli – St. Louis Cardinals – 1969-1982
2. Jan Stenerud – Kansas City Chiefs/Minnesota Vikings/Green Bay Packers – 1967-1985
1. Lynn Swann – Pittsburgh Steelers – 1974-1982
A few thoughts:
-agree with Fred Dean, a one-dimensional DL who has no business in ahead of contemporaries such as Joe Klecko and Fred Smerlas. Also with Lynn Swann, a short career WR who is one of two non-QBs who mainly got in the HoF via postseason success (other is Paul Hornung).
-Bob Griese is one of several "hall of the very good" QBs who have gotten a leg up into the HoF primarily because of postseason success. Others in this category include Bobby Layne, Joe Namath, Terry Bradshaw, and Troy Aikman.
-do not at all agree with a few choices you've listed. One of the least deserving for this list is Roger Wehrli. He had significant postseason honors (AP 1st team all pro 3 times, 7 pro bowls, all-70s team) that look very comparable to other worthy HoF DBs, a reputation as one of the best pure cover corners ever to play in the NFL, and a player QBs such as Sonny Jurgensen and Bob Griese have stated they had to game plan around. He very much belongs in.
-another one I don't agree with is Jan Stenerud. Have seen an unpublished study by Rupert Patrick that shows Stenerud to be one of the five most accurate place kickers (adjusted to era) of all time, along with Nick Lowery, Lou Groza, Morten Andersen, and Gary Anderson.
-Dan Dierdorf and Rayfield Wright make up half of the all-70s team at offensive tackle and have solid postseason honors (AP 1st team all pro/pro bowl) that look decent compared to contemporaries Ron Yary (6/7) and Art Shell (2/8). Dierdorf and Wright are both at 3/6. They too belong in.
-much better 1950s-and-later weak HoF choices might include RB-K Paul Hornung (3 great years but not much else, plus a gambling suspension that would have gotten him banned from baseball for life), DB Emmitt Thomas (lots of INTs but weak postseason honors numbers at 1/5), WR John Stallworth (stats are not as good as such WR contemporaries as Harold Jackson, Cliff Branch, Drew Pearson, and Harold Carmichael), and OTs Mike McCormack and Bob St. Clair (relatively anemic postseason numbers for their positions, 0/6 for the former and 0/5 for the latter).
While I believe Swann, Dean, Stenerud, Dierdorf and Sanders don't belong in the HOF, my issue with players like Wright, Wehrli and others are not necessarily that they are in, but that they got in before other players that I believe were better. How Wehrli is in but Robinson, Harris and others are not is where I have an issue. Plus, the HOF voters are very inconsistent when it comes to team success. It seems to be crucial for quarterbacks, but not considered for other positions. The Cardinals and Lions from the 60s and 70s have just about as many players combined in the HOF as the Cowboys or Raiders from the same era, yet neither team won a playoff game while the others won multiple titles.
I don't agree on Stenerud, but have not seen the study adjusting accuracy. In researching his career, he just seemed to miss a lot of big kicks that I would think a Hall of Famer would make.
Jan Stenerud made major changes in kicking and kickers in the football world, and I can remember one particularly important tackle he made too during his career with the Chiefs. He was enormously accurate in kicking. The Chiefs would not have done as well as they did those years without him. He deserves to be in the HOF!!!!!
Haven't had a chance to reply until now. When comparing postseason honors for Roger Wehrli, it's clear he belongs in. Take a look at the postseason honors numbers for all the modern era DBs in the HoF (AP 1st team all pro/pro bowl/all decade team membership), then determine which of these is not like the others:
4/5/60s
2/9/80s
6/10/80s90s
4/5/70s
5/8/60s70s
1/5/none
2/5/80s
2/12/70s
1/10/none
6/11/90s
3/7/70s
3/8/none
5/8/60s
5/9/70s
1/7/90s
2/7/60s
6/5/50s
3/7/50s
4/9/50s
3/9/50s
and here are the players these numbers go with:
Herb Adderly
Mike Haynes
Ronnie Lott
Jimmy Johnson
Emmitt Thomas
Mel Blount
Ken Houston
Mel Renfro
Rod Woodson
Roger Wehrli
Paul Krause
Willie Wood
Willie Brown
Darrell Green
Lem Barney
Jack Christensen
Dick Lane
Emlen Tunnell
Yale Lary
Wehrli looks very much as if he belongs in this group. In fact, the one who doesn't is Emmitt Thomas (1/5/none). And while it's true that there are other DBs who have reasonably good honors profiles who aren't in, and likely should be:
Johnny Robinson (6/7/AllAFL)
Cliff Harris (3/6/70s)
Jimmy Patton (5/5/none)
Lemar Parrish (1/8/none, fine KR)
Abe Woodson (2/5/none, excellent KR)
Bobby Dillon (4/4/none)
Jack Butler (3/4/50s)
Cornell Green (3/5/none)
it's not fair to deny Wehrli as a result if his numbers stack up favorably to those already in. That only compounds the problem, which is the whole Seniors backlog problem in a nutshell. Denying Wehrli would have been as bad a move as denying Randy Gradishar was. In fact, electing Wehrli makes the other omissions more egregious.
Jan Stenerud has very strong arguments for the HoF that support both superior peak value and longevity:
-only one other PK since 1950 has ever led the league in FG percentage more times than Stenerud. Here's the list: Lou Groza (5 times), Stenerud (4 times), George Blanda, Nick Lowery, Toni Fritsch, Don Cockroft, and Garo Yepremian (3 times), Vinateri, Matt Stover, Eddie Murray, George Blair, Jim Bakken, Gene Mingo, Bobby Walston, and Bruce Gossett (2 times). Groza, Stenerud, and Blanda are in the HoF, and Lowery should be. That's a very strong argument in favor of peak value.
-even Stenerud's non-adjusted-for-era FG percentage at the time of his retirement was among the very best. Raw FG pecentages for players of his time or prior: Bobby Layne 68.000%, Garo Yepremian 67.093%, Stenerud 66.846%, Don Cockroft 65.864%, Mark Moseley 65.646%, Horst Muhlmann 64.435%, Errol Mann 64.130%. But note well the number of career FG attempts: Layne 50, Yepremian 313, Stenerud 558, Cockroft 328, Moseley 457, Muhlmann 239, Mann 276. Layne's numbers are tiny comparaed to everyone else, and he's in the HoF anyway as a QB. Stenerud has nearly twice as many FG attempts as everyone else except Moseley, and even bests Moseley by over 100 attempts. That's significant — a strong amount of extra career value, and a very strong argument for productive longevity.
Would be interested to see details on the argument that Stenerud "just seemed to miss a lot of big kicks that I would think a Hall of Famer would make." His regular season stats would seem to make him look very much like HoF-er. And one might argue that day-in/day-out excellence should be more valued in HoF consideration than Kodak moments — otherwise, Gary Andersen isn't deserving of the HoF at all and Adam Vinateri already belongs — I don't buy it, myself.
Regarding this thought: "Plus, the HOF voters are very inconsistent when it comes to team success. It seems to be crucial for quarterbacks, but not considered for other positions. The Cardinals and Lions from the 60s and 70s have just about as many players combined in the HOF as the Cowboys or Raiders from the same era, yet neither team won a playoff game while the others won multiple titles."
The only players that seem to consistently get a post-season boost into the HoF despite "Hall of the Very Good" stats are QBs, of which there are several examples (Terry Bradshaw, Bobby Layne, Troy Aikman, Bob Griese, Joe Namath). No other position does, and only Lynn Swann and Paul Hornung can be considered outliers to this idea. The HoF is an individual's award, not a team award, which is why some Detroit Lions and St. Louis Cardinals players are in despite a lack of team success.
Misentered the DBs above — my mistake. The 5th DB down is Larry Wilson (5/8/60s70s) and Emmitt Thomas is at 1/5/none. The rest follow in order.
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