A couple weeks back, when the Minnesota Vikings beat the Carolina Panthers, Harrison Smith put up an insane stat line with 14 total tackles (8 solo, 6 assisted), 3 sacks and a forced fumble–apparently the first player in NFL history to put up that stat line. Being a lifelong Minnesota native & Viking fan, it started a lot of talk (or maybe amplified) talk locally about Smith being a Hall of Famer.

I’m not even clear a couple weeks later if I just never heard that talk before, or if it hadn’t really started until this season, which is very possibly his last season in purple (if not his last altogether). A lot of fans locally speculated that the team would move on after last season, given their salary cap woes–but Smith agreed to cut his salary from $14.7 million to $8 million (with $2 million in incentives) to play a 12th season with the Vikings, who brought in Brian Flores as their new defensive coordinator for 2023…a move that many saw as a perfect fit for a player like Smith.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know Smith was an amazing player–anyone regularly watching the team since he was taken 29th overall in 2012 knows he’s often been the lynchpin in the defense, with a penchant for making big plays when the team needed them most. He came into the 2023 season with 34 career interceptions, 16.5 sacks, and 946 tackles. While he has definitely slowed down, he finished the 2022 season with 85 tackles and 5 interceptions in 14 games, although was perhaps not used as aggressively in Ed Donatell’s new 3-4 scheme as he was in previous coach Mike Zimmer’s schemes. But I had never really given much consideration to whether or not he was Hall of Fame caliber…not to say I thought he wasn’t worthy of consideration–but that ultimately with so many top tier safeties in the league these days, he would be in that list of guys that would maybe be fringe HOF conversation after several years of debate.

But Tweets…err…Xs(?) like the one below after that Panthers game got me thinking–clearly a lot of Viking fans think it’s a forgone conclusion that Smith will get his gold jacket…so am I underrating him?

Another post I saw had this graphic, which made me think maybe I really was underrating just how good his career really has been:

Of course, we all know stats aren’t the only thing that will be considered for the Hall of Fame–and some stats like tackles are generally considered somewhat subjective, meaning they’ll have even less influence.  His award profile according to ProFootballReference is 6x Pro Bowl, 1x All-Pro–which falls well short of Polamau’s 8x Pro Bowl, 4x All-Pro, 2x Super Bowl Champion, All-2000’s team, and 2010 Defensive Player of the Year award.

Not that it’s at all a perfect measurement, but the ProFootballReference “Similar Player” feature has Smith listed with Adrian Wilson, Eric Davis and Mark Carrier–solid players, but not exactly knocking on the door to Canton.  Their HOF Monitor rating has him at 41.48–94th among DB, and compared to the average DB HOF score of 98.02. The lowest ranked player on that list of DB’s currently in the Hall of Fame is Dick LeBeau at 48.20.  The lowest ranked more contemporary HOF player is John Lynch.  Patrick Peterson, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas and Eric Weddle are all considerably higher than Smith–as are Chris Harris Jr., Stephon Gilmore and Tryann Mathieu

All of this makes me think that Smith has a much more difficult road to the Hall of Fame than many Vikings fans think–he’s a shoo-in for the Vikings Hall of Fame, possibly a Ring of Honor level player, and might even end up having his number retired (maybe sharing the honor with Paul Krause, who has been vocal about his belief that his number should be retired).

But what says the Zoneblitz.com readership, does Harrison Smith have any shot at Canton?

Does Harrison Smith have a chance to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

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