Each September, the Pro Football Hall of Fame typically names around 95-125 modern-era players, who played at least part of their careers in the past 25 years and have been retired at least 5, as nominees for induction to the Hall of Fame. No more than five modern-era players are inducted each year, so the vast majority of players listed below won’t be inducted this year and most probably won’t be inducted at all. Still, it’s useful to have a baseline to look at them, show their relevant stats and honors, and argue over which players are worthy of induction.
Players are generally sorted according to their performance on past ballots, with those players that have advanced the furthest listed above those that haven’t advanced as far, and those that have advanced more recently listed above those that haven’t advanced as far as recently. Generally, the order in which players are listed only changes to arrange players based on the stage reached in the most recent year, and each new player to become eligible is listed at the top of their applicable category; during the selection process first-year eligible players are listed at the top of whatever category seems appropriate based on their Hall of Fame Monitor number from Pro Football Reference (not the stage I necessarily think they’ll reach). The stages are abbreviated and color-coded in the “Last 5 Years” columns based on a system I shamelessly stole from another blog post a decade or so ago I probably couldn’t find if I looked for it today: “UNL” if a candidate wasn’t even among the nominees that year, “PRE” if they only reached the nominees stage (this one), “Semi” if they were among the 25 semifinalists (announced in November), and “T15” or “T10” if they were among the finalists announced in January and were eliminated at the first or second stage, respectively, of deliberation (historically held during Super Bowl weekend and still announced then, but deliberations seem to have been held earlier, in mid-to-late January, each of the past two years).
To the right of the “Last 5 Years” columns are the various stats and honors that go into the Hall of Fame Monitor, along with the Monitor itself, which is color-coded with the background moving from red to green as the number climbs from 40 to 80. Note that the listed Monitor number will differ from the number published at PFR for players that have reached the semifinalist stage; PFR applies bonuses to the Monitor for reaching the semifinalist and finalist stages, but removes them once a player is actually inducted, and the ordering of the players already reflects the stages each player has reached. To the left of the Monitor are those awards that apply regardless of position: All-Decade team membership, MVPs (but not Defensive Player of the Year awards even though PFR treats them as equivalent to MVPs), first-team All-Pro selections, and Pro Bowl selections. There are two different columns for All-Pro team selections, with the one on the right counting only the most commonly cited selections by the Associated Press, while the one on the left counts each year a player was selected All-Pro by any of the three organizations recognized by the NFL’s official record books, generally the AP, Pro Football Writers Association, and Sporting News. Even though PFR’s own Approximate Value calculation can make up close to half of each player’s Monitor number, I haven’t listed it here. To the right of the Monitor are those statistical categories that feed into the Monitor at each position: yards and touchdowns for offensive skill positions (and kick returners in the latter case), sacks and interceptions for various defensive positions, field goals for kickers, plus specific positions if multiple positions have been merged into a single table. These right-side columns will be removed in latter stages of deliberation when all players are listed on a single table.
Finally, the “Notables Not Listed” section displays selected non-nominees, including any player that was on the nominees list the previous year (and most other players recently nominated), any first-year eligible player with a Monitor score over 40 (as well as any over 35 that are the highest-rated non-selected players at their position), any player I deem noteworthy (generally those previously nominated or that have particularly high Monitor scores) that just lost their last chance not to fall into the senior pool, and the non-selected player still on the ballot with the highest Monitor score if they don’t fit either of the first two categories (as well as any other high scores I deem worth including). These players are included purely for reference and interest and shouldn’t imply anything about how “deserving” they are of being nominated (much less inducted). It’s worth noting, though, that players can be and have jumped from not being nominated at all to eventually making the Hall of Fame, with Sam Mills and Rickey Jackson standing as players that made the Hall of Fame in the last 15 years as modern-era players despite not necessarily being on the list of nominees every year of their eligibility, while Everson Walls and Willie Anderson have made the finals recently despite being off the list of nominees not long before.
Without further ado, here are the 167 modern-era nominees for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2025:
Offense
The Hall cut down a little bit on the explosion of nominees we saw last year, but nonetheless it seems like this is going to be the norm going forward with the onus placed on the new screening committees to keep the number of candidates the selection committee has to consider at a manageable level. Michael Vick, whose influence on the quarterback position arguably outpaces his raw stats and honors, is the only nominated quarterback from last year’s list that dropped out, and first-year eligible candidate (and soon-to-be heated debate topic) Eli Manning is the only newcomer, meaning the Hall still lists the questionable resumes of Marc Bulger and Doug Flutie but not past nominee Drew Bledsoe or at-least-worthy-of-consideration Carson Palmer.
Similarly, Mike Alstott and Brian Westbrook (and Daryl Johnston, who had his modern-era eligibility run out) are the only running backs to drop out, replaced by first-year eligible Marshawn Lynch and Clinton Portis.
There’s a world where I use this section to express outrage over Anquan Boldin, a semifinalist his first three years on the ballot, being left off the list of nominees entirely, and once again wondering what the Hall’s process for finalizing the list of nominees is – because when the Hall’s announcement was released it initially didn’t include any wideouts alphabetically before Torry Holt, resulting in the omission of Boldin, Donald Driver, Irving Fryar, and Antonio Freeman, despite their being accounted for in the number of wideouts claimed to be nominated. One wide receiver alphabetically before Holt that was legitimately left off the nominees was Troy Brown, who had been nominated the two years before last year’s explosion. Nor did the Hall see fit to make up for last year’s explosion being focused on specific positions; besides first-year eligible Demaryius Thomas, the only player nominated this year but not last is Roddy White, who appears to be establishing a pattern of being nominated every other year.
After I mentioned how the group of nominated tight ends seemed to be dwindling year by year, this year sees the number double with Antonio Gates failing to be inducted his first year, Vernon Davis and – somewhat surprisingly – Delanie Walker joining as first-year eligibles, and Jeremy Shockey returning after three years off – also a bit surprising as Dallas Clark and Heath Miller had remained nominated for longer, but Shockey does have the highest Monitor score of the three (and should Gates be inducted and Ben Coates not be, next year he could have the highest Monitor score among non-inducted modern-era tight ends overall).
Of the four previously-eligible offensive linemen newly-nominated last year, two drop out this year, including Mark Stepnoski who I’d noted as a “glaring omission” from previous lists of nominees. Meanwhile Dave Szott, the player with the lowest Monitor of last year’s nominees, repeats that feat this year. At least Jordan Gross rejoins the list of nominees after a year’s absence.
Defense/Special Teams
Dana Stubblefield, the defensive tackle with the highest Monitor among last year’s new nominees, drops out, replaced by Chester McGlockton, who admittedly does seem to have a resume worthy of nomination, if not necessarily progressing any further.
Similarly to the wideouts, Justin Smith was initially left off of the announcement on the Hall’s web site – in fact appears to still be missing when I checked just now – and while I could imagine a group of wideouts being accidentally cut in the editing process, Justin falls in the middle of the alphabet so it’s not as easy to see how that could happen; my best theory is that some intern might have thought he was a duplicate of Neil Smith. At least Clyde Simmons’ return to the ranks of the nominees makes up for Julius Peppers’ first-ballot induction.
The Hall actually did rein back a decent number of linebackers they’d slathered nominations on last year… naturally including Hardy Nickerson and Joey Porter, who now stand out with their All-Decade membership and high Monitor scores being left off the list of nominees (indeed the two highest Monitor scores of any non-nominated player not named Darren Sharper), while keeping the truly astoundingly questionable credentials of Brendon Ayanbadejo, the non-special-teams non-fullback with the lowest Monitor to be nominated either last year or this year. At least Bill Romanowski finally makes the list of nominees in his fourth-to-last year of eligibility.
Hey, at least they actually included Eric Berry this time! As well as the somewhat questionable resume of DeAngelo Hall. And they dropped Carnell Lake, who as at so many other positions, once again had the best Monitor of last year’s new nominees at this position (better than Berry’s even), and now has the best non-Sharper Monitor among non-nominees. It’s a reminder of the key factor likely going into last year’s new nominees, whoever it was that determined them: namely, politics and who had the best lobbyists, with the quality of one’s actual resume being secondary at best. Again, the Monitor shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all (and Ayanbadejo scoring three Pro Bowls and two non-AP first-team All-Pros suggests his ability was better than his lack of interceptions and sacks suggests), but this repeated pattern is certainly eyebrow-raising.
Just to wrap things up here, the list of one-and-done nominees at special teams includes Brad Maynard, who astounded me with his truly limited resume last year, but also Dante Hall, who had – say it with me – the highest Monitor number among newcomers to this chart last year, and as I pointed out then, the fact he managed to beat out Devin Hester for first-team All-Decade at both kick and punt returner suggests he should be getting nominated a lot more consistently. As with last year, I should note that players get categorized as returners if they got named All-Pro there, regardless of what their resume might be at their primary offensive or defensive position, so Darren Sproles gets placed here and not at running back because his Pro Bowls, All-Pro selections, and All-Decade selection were all at returner.