HOF Quick Hit: Frank Gore vs Jamaal Charles

by Tony | May 25, 2020 | Hall of Fame

Not sure how many of you are on Twitter at all (follow us at @zoneblitzcom [Andy] and @toneblitz [Me]…although it tends to skew more fantasy football there), but stumbled across a tweet earlier tonight that interested me in a couple ways:

Frank Gore ?
Jamaal Charles ? https://t.co/y9tljTPFmM

— PFF (@PFF) May 25, 2020

First is the content itself–Gore vs Charles…not really a heads up that I would have ever considered, mostly because I never considered Charles to be that level of player. Don’t get me wrong–he was a great player (that I think may have won me a fantasy football championship or two), but for such a short period of time.

While there are some short term career running backs in Canton, I don’t feel like Charles reached the bar of Gale Sayers (who admittedly may not be elected today, but in his time was apparently considered a revolutionary back) or Terrell Davis, who cracked the 2,000 yard mark AND led his team to two Super Bowl wins.

He played 11 seasons in the NFL, but was only four times did he start more than 10 games (although defining a starting RB isn’t always that easy), cracked the 1,000 yard rushing mark five times, and finished his career with over 10,000 all-purpose yards.

Gore has been discussed several times here–although amazingly enough, we’ve apparently never given him his own “Should Frank Gore Make the Hall of Fame” post…which might tell you something.

The more I look at it…the premise of the article is kind of ridiculous–I hadn’t even read the full article before I started writing this, and while it’s obvious that they’re trying to give an example of “Longetivity” vs. “Peak Performance”–but in choosing Charles, they kind of missed the mark, given that Gore’s best season (his second season in 2006, a full two years before Charles was drafted) Gore put up 2,160 all-purpose yards with 1,695 on the ground–a full 180 yards ahead of Charles’ peak season of 1,980 from 2013.

It’s true, Charles did it in a lot fewer touches–329 vs 373–and Charles had two seasons over 1,900 total yards, whereas Gore’s second highest season was 1,538. But to argue that Charles’ peak was high enough to warrant Hall of Fame selection…when Charles wasn’t even leading the league in yardage when he was at his peak, and only led the league in rushing TDs once (with 12)…just falls flat.

But the second thing that the article got me thinking about actually has to do with the Hall of Fame selection process.  I think we would all agree that the current process has some flaws in it–not the least of which (in my eyes) comes down to trusting the opinions of a bunch of sports writers, when some of the sports writers that I’ve seen on the list over the years frankly aren’t that good (with their writing, their impartiality, or their sports takes).

But what about people who work at companies like Pro Football Focus, who seemingly have made serious in roads in their acceptance into the NFL media circles, with some announcers (albeit mostly Cris Collinsworth, who I didn’t realize is apparently the majority owner of the company). They do an amazing job breaking the game down into analytics & grades–although their grading process draws plenty of criticism as well.

As the game heads even more towards an analytics based approach–much like baseball–are we going to start to include things like career PFF rating (or similar services from other companies) into our decisions of who is Hall of Fame worthy?  Should some of the top analysts from these companies be given a say in who gets in, as some of the writers roll off the list of voters? (Maybe some have already? I haven’t checked the list in a while).

I’m not saying they should or shouldn’t–just curious what the community thinks…about Gore vs. Charles AND about how analytics may play a role in future HOF selections.

Photo by Mike Morbeck