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:
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.
When I first drew #57 for our Best in NFL History series, per usual I thought of Vikings that I could remember with the number, and the only player that popped into my head was Dwayne Rudd. Or as he’s typically known here in Minnesota (and I believe in Cleveland) Dwayne “Effing” Rudd. No worries, he didn’t make the cut.
Bring in the 50’s, I figured we would have a bunch of linebackers to choose from, but none immediately jumped to mind–I looked up the ProFootballReference.com Jersey Number page first, and realized that Rickey Jackson (who I did see play) and Tom Jackson (who I just missed play) would probably duke it out, although there were a couple other names I recognized on the list.
It wasn’t until I flipped to #57 in my Best By Number book that I realized even looking at the PFR page, I missed the guy that will get my vote–the other player who wore #57 as his primary jersey number in the Hall of Fame.
Just a quick hitter here, on a player that I’m kind of surprised we didn’t write about earlier–possibly because his retirement came during one of our doldrums of writing, or possibly because we hadn’t even considered the topic worth of discussion…
As I was doing some writing for another Hall of Fame post that will hit in the next day or two, a tweet came across my phone screen–I think what I was seeing was a retweet, but I can’t seem to find it, so I’ll embed the original:
Jared Allen: "I'm a Viking, I'll go in [to the NFL Hall of Fame] as Viking….The Vikings have my heart."
I saw that, and knew I wouldn’t have to dig very far in the comments to find people asking the same question I had–sure enough, right away:
Don't get me wrong, Jared Allen might be my favorite NFL player of all time. He certainly belongs in the Hall of Very Good. Hall of Fame? I'm not sold. He ranks 12th all time in sacks, .72/game, 187th all time in tackles. Vikings Ring of Honor for sure, HOF is a big maybe to me.
Side note–I also saw a Tweet from an apparent Vikings fan claiming that the Chiefs still won the Jared Allen trade…they used the first round pick on Branden Albert, and one of the third round picks on Jamaal Charles…neither team won a Super Bowl with the picks. That might be worth a post all on its own.
Back to the question at hand–aside from the fact that if & when you are elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, you don’t choose which team you go in as, the question remains–will Jared Allen some day be on the stage in Canton donning the yellow jacket?
He played in 187 games over 13 years, amassing 136 sacks, 32 forced fumbles, 19 fumble recoveries, six interceptions, two defensive touchdowns, plus two touchdown receptions on his two career catches, for Kansas City. He led the NFL in sacks in two separate seasons, including a 22 sack season in 2011, and was named to five Pro Bowls, in addition to being named All-Pro four times. He will be eligible for election to the Hall of Fame for the first time in 2021.
Normally the sack totals would seem to indicate that he would be in–but in today’s NFL, with the increase in the passing game, it’s a good total, but is it really great? He’s 12th on the all-time list right now–the only three ahead of him on the list that aren’t in the Hall of Fame (Julius Peppers, Terrell Suggs and DeMarcus Ware) are also very possibly Canton bound. Of course, the first name behind him (with 133.5) is John Abraham, who is…not exactly what I think of when I think Hall of Fame. Behind him, tied with Lawrence Taylor, is Leslie O’Neal–another non-Hall of Famer.
So what says you, Zoneblitz readers–is Jared Allen a Hall of Famer?
Almost eight years ago now we started this series, and apparently more than five years since our most recent, thanks to the COVID19 shut down that has us working at home, we’re going to try to get back into our By The Numbers series.
We’ve seen quite a few go down this path over the years—many just using a list of their opinions as way to drive pageviews–but our audience of Hall of Fame fanatics, combined with our non-traditional approach of bouncing around by picking numbers out of a hat leads to better content (in our opinion).
So, with the goal of getting us back to averaging more than one of our number posts per year, we finally get into the trenches with number 79.
We’ve done a fair number of “Is player xx a Hall of Famer” posts here – Eli Manning, Tony Romo, and Patrick Willis as a few examples – but somehow this one is one we never really considered that much. It first came across my Twitter feed last week, when I saw Lamar Jackson’s initial response to user Grantlong (@grantlonggg) asking if Michael Vick is a first ballot hall of famer…keeping in mind, I missed the “first ballot” part of that tweet the first several times reading that.
Lamar Jackson clearly is in the camp of “Yes” to that question:
I, on the other hand, am more in the camp of Reddit user LunchThreatener, who’s post reminded me of the tweet earlier this week, who thinks Vick isn’t even HOF worthy, much less first ballot.
Just looking at the stats–Vick played in 143 games, but started just 115, finishing with a 61-51-1 record. He finished with a 56.2% completion percentage, 22,464 yards, 133 touchdowns and 88 interceptions (a 2.7% INT rate). He was named to 4 Pro Bowls, zero All-Pro teams, played in six playoff games, had 14 comebacks and led 15 game-winning drives.
A lot of people will say he revolutionized the position–and he started that process, but to me, the 56.2% completion percentage is the most glaring problem with that argument–when critics called Lamar Jackson a running back in disguise, they were more accurately describing Vick. By comparison, Jackson finished his second season with a 66.1% completion percentage–a mark Vick never even came close to (career high was 62.6% in his 2010 resurgence with the Eagles). Jackson also finished with a 36:6 TD:INT ratio. If you project those numbers out for the length of Vick’s career, even accounting for Vick’s two year layoff, he would finish with 468 touchdowns (if he remained a full-time starter, which Vick couldn’t).
So Jackson is much more in line to be considered a revolutionary at the position (after Cam Newton bridged that gap, albeit with a different QB running style)–and personally I think that Vick will likely not make the cut in Canton.
What say you, Zoneblitz readers? Vote in the poll and leave your comments below.
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