Brett Favre and Alan Faneca headline the first-year eligible players nominated for enshrinement in the Pro Football
Hall of Fame’s 2016 class.
Favre, who spent most of his career in Green Bay (after spending his rookie year on the bench in Atlanta) before finishing up with the New York Jets and Minnesota, restored glory to the Packers’ organization, winning a Super Bowl and producing 11 Pro Bowls and three Associated Press All Pro first team awards.
Faneca split his career between Pittsburgh and the Jets, going to the Pro Bowl nine times and winning AP First Team honors six times.
Terrell Owens (6/5), who spent eight years in San Francisco before joining four other teams, and Lawyer Milloy (4/1), who played with New England, Buffalo, Atlanta and Seattle, also are well-known first-year nominees, as is Redskins and Broncos RB Clinton Portis (2/0).
Eleven first-year nominees are joined by 97 others, including 10 finalists from 2014 who ultimately did not get enshrined. They include:
- QB Kurt Warner
- RB Terrell Davis
- WR Marvin Harrison
- T Orlando Pace
- LB/DE Kevin Greene
- S John Lynch
- K Morten Andersen
- Coach Don Coryell
- Coach Tony Dungy
- Coach Jimmy Johnson
The entire list can be viewed at the Hall of Fame’s website by clicking here.
The 108 total modern era candidates will be winnowed down to 25 and then 15 in the months to come. At Super Bowl weekend, the voters meet to narrow the list to 10 finalists and then to five. Those five players, along with two senior candidates (Ken Stabler and Dick Stanfel ) and one contributor (Eddie DeBartolo) will receive yes or no votes from the entire group of voters. They need yeses from 80 percent to be inducted.
Tony and I made our predictions in a May post you can read by clicking here.
More discussion to come throughout the coming months.
I don’t see TO waiting as long as some of you think. He has the best resume as far as #s and postseason honors at WR since Jerry Rice. Randy Moss same thing. TO should get in within next 3-4 years and same for Randy his first 3-4 years eligible. Then the rest will follow(Ward, Holt, Bruce, etc).
I agree that both TO and Moss will get in the HOF within 3-4 years, at this point the 1st year eligibles in 2019 and 2020 are not very strong. Tony Gonzalez, Ed Reed, Champ Bailey top the list for 2019 and the way HOF voters treat TEs and S positions leads to uncertainly there – sure one could get elected, perhaps even two of them, but leaving space for a few more moderns if Moss and TO are still not elected by then they certainly would merit consideration. Even 2017 (with best chances LaDainian Tomlinson, Jason Taylor) and 2018 (best: Ray Lewis, Randy Moss) are pretty weak years with strong 1st year candidates. I could certainly see both TO and Moss elected by 2020 which would seem deserving. My point is that for the years 2016-2020 I do not see any classes with the likelihood of three 1st time eligible elected, sure there are certainly more HOFs among those years that will ge in but not in their year 1.