Randall McDaniel: Class of 2009

by Tony | Aug 3, 2009 | Hall of Fame

We’ve been quite vocal about our belief that Randall McDaniel not only should be in the Hall of Fame, but that he should have been a first ballot guy.  In a little less than a week, McDaniel will finally be honored by the Hall–and, of course, we’ll be there for it.

In advance of this weekend’s festivities, we’re going to be looking for a lot of the local profiles that are being written by the inductees–starting with McDaniel.  The Star Tribune ran an impressive story about him Sunday, that illustrated many of the reasons that I’ve always found him to be one of my favorite players–from the quality of his play, to what an outstanding & humble person he is off the field, where today he works full time teaching kids with special education needs at a local Minnesota school.

Unfortunately, in their effort to make people buy the print edition of the paper, it appears that they have not put it on their Website (at least yet)–so I can’t link to it.  We’ll update this story with a link when (if) they get around to it–but in the mean time, here’s a video interview that they did with him.

UPDATE: This article isn’t the same one that appeared in the paper Sunday (despite a very similar headline), but it’s decent.

Steve McNair: Hall of Fame?

by Tony | Jul 8, 2009 | Hall of Fame

Well, Tony P. already asked for it–and to be honest, I thought about putting it up, but my thoughts on the matter are fairly straight forward, and I wasn’t sure it was worth the post.

Plus, it’s come up before, here and here (and before we go all cynical on Tony P. for saying yes in one place, no in another, I believe the no is in reference to him being a first year guy).

But now ProFootballTalk.com has posted the question, and since we do seem to talk a lot about the Hall of Fame here, I figured we better do it here too–especially since frankly I think we’ve got a better group of Hall of Fame minds discussing Hall of Fame matters.

So the question is–is Steve McNair worthy of the Pro Footabll Hall of Fame?

If my math is right, he’ll be eligible in 2013–the same year as Michael Strahan, Warren Sapp, Jonathon Ogden, Larry Allen and more.

McNair’s stats include 31,300 yards, 174 TDs vs. 119 Ints, 82.8 career rating, 60.1% completion percentage, and 37 rushing TDs.  He appeared in one Super Bowl, was a 3-time Pro Bowler, was not ever a 1st team All-Pro, and won one co-MVP in 2003.

Non-tangibles that may come into play, whether they should or not, would be his reputation as a gritty player who would play through pain, although he also did miss a lot of games (at least 28 after becoming the full time starter, by my count), the fact that he was the first highly drafted black QB from a smaller, traditionally black school, who had a team built around him (there were teams that had been built around black QBs before [Warren Moon], and black QBs drafted in the first round [Doug Williams], but none that were drafted as high as #3).

Information forthcoming around the circumstances of his murder could also be on the minds of some voters. Like I said, these are non-tangibles that probably shouldn’t be considered, but the voters, although members of the media, are also (mostly) human.

So what say you, OUR voting members?  Leave your rationale in the comments below…