Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2016

The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 46 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 13 at-large writers.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2010 season will be eligible for induction in 2016.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside two senior candidates, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, and one contributor (not players or coaches), selected by another nine-member subpanel, for a total of eight. From this list, at least four and no more than eight people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2016 is:

Brett Favre
Marvin Harrison
Orlando Pace
Tony Dungy
Kevin Greene
Eddie DeBartolo
Dick Stanfel
Ken Stabler

Hall of Fame Game: Colts v. Packers

2015 Pro Football Hall of Fame Watch – The Top 50 Active Resumes

Surefire first-ballot players:

  1. QB Peyton Manning
  2. QB Tom Brady

These two stand far and away on top of the pack, and their lead has become a yawning chasm; not only are their names indelibly linked, they’re the only two remaining active players from NFL Network’s “100 Greatest Players” from 2010, and they’re still among the best in the game (even if retirement rumors are starting to swirl around Manning).

Borderline first-ballot players:

  1. QB Drew Brees
  2. DT Kevin Williams

The top three names in last year’s version of this category all retired, though I’m not sure if Ed Reed has acknowledged it yet (though he was certainly willing to spend the season on the Inside the NFL set as though he knew he wasn’t going to get another job with a team). That tells you a) how loaded this Hall of Fame class is going to be and b) how barren this category is now. Fortunately, the next category, and the rest of the list, suggests this year may mark a true passing of the torch.

Surefire Hall of Famers:

  1. TE Antonio Gates
  2. S Troy Polamalu
  3. CB Charles Woodson
  4. TE Jason Witten
  5. DE Julius Peppers
  6. DE Dwight Freeney
  7. LB DeMarcus Ware
  8. RB Adrian Peterson
  9. QB Aaron Rodgers
  10. CB Darrelle Revis
  11. WR Calvin Johnson
  12. WR Andre Johnson

I’ve held off on putting Aaron Rodgers, Calvin Johnson, and Darrelle Revis on the surefire list, when conventional wisdom would have them first-ballot guys, until they racked up the resume to warrant it, and for a while the possibility of them being flashes in the pan was very much alive, but Rodgers’ MVP-caliber season was more than enough to do the job, as was Revis’ return to All-Pro form, while Johnson’s return to the Pro Bowl gave me a reason to reassess his resume compared to the other WRs at the surefire/borderline line. Good thing too: Ware is the highest-ranked player from last year’s list not named Manning or Brady to improve his resume, and he didn’t budge relative to the others. Ouch. I’m leaving AP on the list for now, as he still has a shot to show contrition and become a Michael-Vick-esque comeback story, but if this marks the end of his career he’s not getting into the Hall of Fame, placement in this category aside, unless the memory of how his career ended eventually fades.

Borderline Hall of Famers:

  1. WR Larry Fitzgerald
  2. WR Steve Smith
  3. WR Wes Welker
  4. DE Jared Allen
  5. RB Jamaal Charles
  6. RB Arian Foster
  7. WR Reggie Wayne
  8. LB Patrick Willis
  9. RB LeSean McCoy
  10. OT Joe Thomas
  11. RB Marshawn Lynch
  12. DE Haloti Ngata
  13. DE John Abraham
  14. QB Ben Roethlisberger
  15. QB Eli Manning
  16. QB Michael Vick
  17. P Shane Lechler
  18. WR Brandon Marshall
  19. OT Jahri Evans
  20. DT Ndamukong Suh
  21. S Earl Thomas
  22. QB Philip Rivers
  23. KR Devin Hester
  24. K Adam Vinatieri
  25. RB Maurice Jones-Drew

With Rodgers, Revis, and Calvin Johnson leaving this category, I don’t have anyone obvious to serve as a demonstration of how players relatively early in their careers can have weaker resumes than you think, but I do have a couple of good reasons for Adrian Peterson to get back into the public’s good graces and continue his career: Jamaal Charles and Arian Foster don’t have resumes that are that much worse. If they had one or two more All-Pro seasons, would you see them as players on par with Peterson?

Vinatieri remains an interesting situation: very few non-quarterbacks have been propelled into the Hall of Fame on the strength of their Super Bowls… but Vinatieri could be one of them, despite being a kicker, a position with only one other representative in the Hall at all. [And while every quarterback with multiple Super Bowl wins is in the Hall of Fame except Jim Plunkett, all except Plunkett has at least three Pro Bowl selections, so while I have to put Russell Wilson on the list his single Pro Bowl keeps him pinned to the bottom for now.]

Need work:

  • RB Chris Johnson
  • DT Justin Smith
  • S Eric Weddle
  • T Jason Peters
  • LB Lance Briggs

Adrian Wilson may say he wants to play some more, but he hasn’t played a down in two seasons and had no scuttlebutt about being picked up by someone else once he was cut by the Bears. It’s over, and it won’t be ending with a bust in Canton. The same might be said for Justin Smith, who would seem to have a better chance of improving his resume, all things considered; he’s been thinking of retiring but the 49ers reportedly want him back.

Young stars (exclamation marks indicate players with resumes already strong enough to be among the top 50):

  • C Maurkice Pouncey (5th year)
  • TE Jimmy Graham (5th year)
  • LB Navarro Bowman (5th year)
  • TE Rob Gronkowski (5th year)!
  • LB Von Miller (4th year)
  • WR A.J. Green (4th year)
  • DE J.J. Watt (4th year)!
  • CB Patrick Peterson (4th year)!
  • CB Richard Sherman (4th year)!
  • RB DeMarco Murray (4th year)
  • DE Robert Quinn (4th year)
  • LB Justin Houston (4th year)
  • QB Andrew Luck (3rd year)
  • QB Russell Wilson (3rd year)
  • WR Josh Gordon (3rd year)
  • LB Luke Kuechly (3rd year)
  • RB Eddie Lacy (2nd year)
  • RB Le’Veon Bell (2nd year)
  • WR Odell Beckham Jr. (Rookie)
  • G Zack Martin (Rookie)
  • DT Aaron Donald (Rookie)
  • LB C.J. Mosley (Rookie)

I’ve renamed this section from “players to watch for the future”, but I’m not happy with this name. I had someone blast me last year for putting rookies on the list but not putting LeSean McCoy or Jamaal Charles in either this list or the Needs Work section before they burst onto the main list last year. The purpose of this section is to list players early in their careers that have shown indications of Hall of Fame talent, but just haven’t had long enough careers to rack up enough accolades to make the main list – people like Watt or Gronk that have every ounce of Hall of Fame aura about them and might be my new Rodgers/Megatron once they make the main list, a chance to explain how this list only reflects everyone’s career if they retired today.

This year’s biggest-name rookie didn’t make the Pro Bowl in his own right.

Players to watch for the Class of 2019:

  • TE Tony Gonzalez
  • S Ed Reed
  • CB Champ Bailey
  • FB Vonta Leach

As mentioned before, each of the first three could very easily go in first ballot, especially Gonzalez, for whom the only reason I hadn’t listed him as surefire is because he’d be the first tight end ever to go in on the first ballot. Leach is the only other candidate to get in at all, but he has as good a chance as any fullback.

Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2015

The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 46 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 13 at-large writers.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2009 season will be eligible for induction in 2015.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside one senior candidate, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, and two contributors (not players or coaches), selected by another nine-member subpanel, for a total of eight. From this list, at least four and no more than eight people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2015 is:

Marvin Harrison
Jerome Bettis
Will Shields
Junior Seau
Charles Haley
Mick Tingelhoff
Bill Polian
Ron Wolf

Hall of Fame Game: Steelers v. Giants

2014 Pro Football Hall of Fame Watch – The Top 50 Active Resumes

Surefire first-ballot players:

  1. QB Peyton Manning
  2. QB Tom Brady

These two stand far and away on top of the pack.

Borderline first-ballot players:

  1. TE Tony Gonzalez
  2. S Ed Reed
  3. CB Champ Bailey
  4. QB Drew Brees
  5. DT Kevin Williams

Tony Gonzalez, who just completed his last season, is by most standards, the greatest tight end of all time. Will that be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot?

The problem is not merely that no tight end has done so before, the problem is that pretty much every tight end had to wait multiple years to get in. Shannon Sharpe was snubbed twice before finally being inducted. John Mackey placed about three spots ahead of Gonzalez when the NFL Network did their “Top 100 Greatest Players” some years ago, after Sharpe’s first snub but before he got in, but didn’t get into the Hall of Fame until twenty years after he retired, when his eligibility was close to up. Gonzalez has likely passed Mackey in the intervening time, and I doubt Gonzalez will have to wait any later than the second ballot, but will the voters be willing to take that big a leap?

On the other hand, Sharpe’s first snub attracted considerable outrage in several corners, suggesting there’s considerable support for the notion of voting a tight-end in first ballot, support that would be even stronger for Gonzalez. For the Hall of Fame voters to continue their past position on tight ends ignores the nature of the position in today’s NFL, where it has basically become a variant of the wide receiver position (see: the ongoing controversy over what position Jimmy Graham would be franchised under). If any tight end merited the honor represented by first-ballot Hall of Fame status, it would likely be Gonzalez. I would be very surprised, maybe even shocked, if Gonzalez didn’t go in first ballot. But I can’t say it’ll happen with absolute certainty. We’re talking about unprecedented territory here, both with the player and the circumstance we’re ascribing to him.

Surefire Hall of Famers:

  1. TE Antonio Gates
  2. S Troy Polamalu
  3. CB Charles Woodson
  4. TE Jason Witten
  5. DE Julius Peppers
  6. DE Dwight Freeney
  7. LB DeMarcus Ware
  8. RB Adrian Peterson
  9. WR Andre Johnson

I was torn on whether or not to keep Richard Seymour on the list; rumors swirled around him potentially being sought out by teams as late as October, but he’d also indicated he was fine with retiring if he wasn’t picked up at any point in the season. My thinking is that Seymour’s career is almost certainly over, but the main thing that convinced me to remove his name from the list was to remove some awkwardness on the Players to Watch list.

Borderline Hall of Famers:

  1. WR Larry Fitzgerald
  2. WR Steve Smith
  3. WR Wes Welker
  4. DE Jared Allen
  5. WR Calvin Johnson
  6. QB Aaron Rodgers
  7. WR Reggie Wayne
  8. LB Patrick Willis
  9. OT Joe Thomas
  10. RB Jamaal Charles
  11. DE Haloti Ngata
  12. DE John Abraham
  13. CB Darrelle Revis
  14. RB LeSean McCoy
  15. QB Eli Manning
  16. QB Michael Vick
  17. P Shane Lechler
  18. WR Brandon Marshall
  19. RB Arian Foster
  20. QB Ben Roethlisberger
  21. QB Philip Rivers
  22. FB Vonta Leach
  23. KR Devin Hester
  24. K Adam Vinatieri
  25. RB Maurice Jones-Drew

You may be wondering why Calvin Johnson and Aaron Rodgers aren’t on the surefire list, when you probably see them as first-ballot guys. This is what’s so interesting about looking at players’ resumes if they retired right now. Johnson could threaten several of Jerry Rice’s records, but he’s only made the Pro Bowl (without getting in as an alternate) four of his seven years in the league – pretty good, and his less-good years can be chalked up to playing for bad Lions teams (much as with Fitzgerald and the Cardinals), but he might need one more good year to make the leap (certainly the surefire list could use him). Rodgers is especially interesting, and a possible cautionary tale for Johnson, as he had shockingly elevated himself in just a few years into one of the best QBs in the league and a surefire first-ballot HOFer if he kept it up… but one wonders if he’s starting to get overshadowed. He had a Pro-Bowl-caliber year in 2012, but a far cry from his masterful 2011, and missed a good chunk of 2013. Both could still end up being remembered as flashes-in-the-pan who were, for a brief time, two of the best at their positions in the entire league, Johnson inspiring people to mention his name in the same sentence with Rice, Rodgers a figure on par with Brady and Manning who picked up a ring along the way, and two of the great what-could-have-been stories. Would that be enough to get them into the Hall of Fame? Maybe… but it’d be a pretty long wait.

Even more interesting would be Vinatieri: very few non-quarterbacks have been propelled into the Hall of Fame on the strength of their Super Bowls… but Vinatieri could be one of them, despite being a kicker, a position with only one other representative in the Hall at all. And while every quarterback with multiple Super Bowl wins is in the Hall of Fame except Jim Plunkett, they all have substantially better resumes than Roethlisberger (who has only two Pro Bowl selections), which is why he’s so low.

Need work:

  • RB Chris Johnson
  • RB Marshawn Lynch
  • DT Justin Smith
  • S Adrian Wilson
  • OT Jahri Evans
  • LB Lance Briggs
  • CB Nnamdi Asomugha

When I put Maurice Jones-Drew on the “borderline” side of the list I agonized endlessly over what side of the line he fell on. Chris Johnson was on the “players to watch” list with an exclamation mark next to his name last year and I believe the year before as well. Now that it was time for him to graduate off that list, I realized he had the same or better resume than Jones-Drew. (Keeping Jones-Drew off the Players to Watch list may have played a part in my motivation.) But when I started this I swore that I would never bump anyone down a category once they made it to a given category (except for “needs work” players falling out of the top 50) or to move anyone up a category unless they actively improved their standing, and neither happened. On the other hand, I’m no longer sure how much Ray Rice ever deserved his exclamation mark last year…

Players to watch for the future (exclamation marks indicate players with resumes already strong enough to be among the top 50):

  • LB Clay Matthews (5th year)
  • DE Cameron Wake (5th year)
  • DT Ndamukong Suh (4th year)
  • C Maurkice Pouncey (4th year)
  • TE Jimmy Graham (4th year)
  • LB Navarro Bowman (4th year)
  • S Earl Thomas (4th year)!
  • QB Cam Newton (3rd year)
  • LB Von Miller (3rd year)
  • WR A.J. Green (3rd year)
  • DE J.J. Watt (3rd year)
  • LB Aldon Smith (3rd year)
  • CB Patrick Peterson (3rd year)!
  • CB Richard Sherman (3rd year)
  • QB Andrew Luck (2nd year)
  • QB Russell Wilson (2nd year)
  • WR Josh Gordon (2nd year)
  • LB Luke Kuechly (2nd year)
  • RB Eddie Lacy (Rookie)
  • WR Keenan Allen (Rookie)

No rookies wowed everyone the way they have the past few years, with the possible exception of Eddie Lacy.

Players to watch for the Class of 2018:

  • LB Ray Lewis
  • WR Randy Moss
  • DT Richard Seymour
  • LB Brian Urlacher
  • CB Ronde Barber
  • G Steve Hutchison

This is a loaded class even if Seymour’s career isn’t over. Lewis is a surefire first-ballot guy, and as explained last year that’ll provide cover for the voters to hold Urlacher back a year when he doesn’t really have a first-ballot resume anyway; Moss has a chance to join him, depending on how the voters feel about his extracurricular activities and the state of the WR backlog, but Seymour does not. Barber and Hutchison were the two names at the very back of the surefire list last year, so they may have lengthy waits.

Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2014

The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 44 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 11 at-large writers.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2008 season will be eligible for induction in 2014.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside two senior candidates, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, for a total of seven. From this list, at least four and no more than seven people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2014 is:

Andre Reed
Michael Strahan
Derrick Brooks
Jerome Bettis
Will Shields
Ray Guy

Hall of Fame Game: Steelers v. Giants

How to Fix the Hall of Fame (And How Not to Fix It)

Maybe it was the fact that Keith Olbermann now has a sports-oriented platform with which to rail against the “banana republic” that is the Baseball Hall of Fame. Maybe it was Deadspin’s stunt where they turned over what turned out to be Dan Le Batard’s Hall of Fame ballot to the public for them to vote on. Maybe it was the continued hand-wringing over the steroids issue, or the fact not a single modern-era player was inducted the previous year, or the ballots and accompanying grandstanding and sanctimonious moralizing that made Le Batard’s stunt seem reasonable. Or maybe it was some combination of the above. Whatever the reason, despite the induction of three very worthy first-ballot candidates, this year’s Hall of Fame election became as much about how broken the election process supposedly is than about the election itself.

It strikes me, though, that many of the reforms that many writers and other commenters propose to fix the Hall miss the reasons for the rules they want to change. Doubtless the voting could be expanded beyond merely sportswriters, and writers who throw away their ballots in ways more outrageous than Le Batard did should lose them. But for example, Deadspin elected the top 10 candidates that received a simple majority of the people’s vote, rather than the 75% the Hall requires, explaining that the high threshold helps allow the process to be “hijacked by cranks, attention-seeking trolls, and the merely perplexed—people who exercise power out of proportion to their numbers due to the perverse structure of the voting.” But it should be difficult to get into the Hall; someone should only get in if there’s some sort of consensus that they’re deserving.

Nor do I buy the argument that because there are already cheaters and general assholes in the Hall of Fame, that justifies inducting the steroids users as well. Yes, the general public is ambivalent at best about the steroids issue, but the sport’s history is more important to baseball than any other sport; the steroids users have irrevocably tainted that history, and it seems odd to play up that history in one breath while backing the induction of the steroids users with the other. The single-season and career home run records, once the most hallowed in sports, will forever be untrustworthy and have an asterisk mentally if not physically attached to them, and many other records besides. Of all the players blackballed from the Hall, only Shoeless Joe Jackson might have done more damage to the game. (There’s an argument to be made that players that had Hall-worthy credentials without steroids should be inducted, which would put Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and possibly Mark McGwire in, but not Sammy Sosa, who no one had heard of before he came from out of nowhere in the summer of ’98, or Rafael Palmeiro, who actually received few enough votes to be dropped from the ballot this year. That a player like Sosa could effectively juice his way into a Hall of Fame career underscores why the steroids issue can’t be simply swept under the rug. I would bet Gaylord Perry would be in the Hall of Fame regardless of whether or not he spit.)

Many commentators, including Olbermann, faulted the 10-person limit for forcing voters to make very difficult choices on a loaded ballot, resulting in part in Craig Biggio missing induction by two votes. What would be the harm, they say, in allowing as many people as the voters find worthy to get in? Theoretically, if someone isn’t one of the ten best candidates on the ballot maybe they aren’t that strong a candidate after all (again, it’s supposed to be difficult to get in); but even beyond that, it’s not so much having a ton of people getting in at once than losing those people in future years. Craig Biggio will be inducted into the Hall of Fame, possibly as soon as next year. But if not next year, it’s very possible he (or someone like Mike Piazza or Jeff Bagwell) may end up saving the Hall from a repeat of 2013, when no one was inducted. It’s worth noting that even with a supposedly loaded ballot, only three people were actually inducted, and only seven even received more than half the vote. Clearly there isn’t that much consensus over which candidates are more deserving to get in over which other candidates.

Perhaps the baseball Hall could take a cue from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which repeatedly cuts down all the numerous candidates for induction down to a list of 15 finalists, then brings the voters together Super Bowl Weekend to debate the merits of those fifteen candidates and further whittle them down to five. Result: the Pro Football Hall of Fame always inducts the maximum five modern-era players despite actually having a higher threshold for induction at 80%, and so actually tries to clear its backlogs. Obviously, given the fact that the BBWAA has hundreds of people voting, it’s impractical to get them all together to discuss the candidates, but what would be wrong with a two-stage voting system, where the first ballot cuts the list down to 10-15 finalists, who are then subject to a straight up/down vote?

Underlying the last complaint, however, seems to be the notion that someone either “is a Hall of Famer or he is not“, that it’s ridiculous for someone who wasn’t considered a Hall of Famer X number of years in the past to suddenly be a Hall of Famer now. Presumably many of these people would prefer to hold a single up/down vote on a candidate five years after their retirement, induct anyone who crosses the threshold of induction, and keep out everyone else. It’s an attractive prospect, but it seems cruel to subject a player’s destiny to a single vote at an arbitrary point in time, especially if the rules may be different at a different point in time; should Edgar Martinez’s chances be based on the luck of how the voters feel about the DH issue in one particular semi-random year? The Hall of Fame voting window allows candidates to be looked at fairly and with some degree of historical perspective; five years after retirement allows voters to vote somewhat dispassionately without being too close to the player’s career, but leaving their fate in the hands of the Veterans’ Committee after fifteen years ensures that a player’s fate lies in the hands of those who actually saw him play. That’s why I’m leery of giving Bill James a Hall of Fame vote. Bill James is awesome; he may well go in to the Hall of Fame for the way he revolutionized the way we look at the game. But Bill James perfectly encapsulates why there’s a statute of limitations on how long a player can wait before it gets much tougher for them to get into the Hall of Fame. We don’t need him engaging in historical revisionism to justify why some random player from the 30s no one at the time would have ever dreamed of getting into the Hall should get in using statistics no one at the time could have ever conceived of. It’s disingenuous for someone to complain about, say, Bert Blyleven getting in without any change in his resume in one breath and argue for Bill James to get a Hall of Fame vote with the other. It’s called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Great.

When figuring out how to fix the Hall of Fame (in any sport), there are a few things to keep in mind:

  • The fate of players should be in the hands of a group of electors who experienced their career as it happened, that is, not making a post facto judgment. They should also, however, have a good grasp of the standards by which someone should be considered a Hall of Famer and the historical perspective to assess players by those standards in a relatively unbiased fashion, at least as a whole. The selection process should facilitate striking a balance between these competing concerns.
  • Reasonable people will always disagree over someone’s Hall credentials. They also disagree over how stringent the standards should be for induction, with some “small Hall” people arguing that only the very best of the very best should be honored.
  • Once a player is inducted into the Hall, they become a benchmark for any other player to get in; i.e., “if player X is in the Hall, player Y should be too.”
  • Once a player is inducted into the Hall, they are never un-inducted. The body of electors should be very sure of themselves if they wish to induct somebody.

With these challenges in mind, we can begin to sketch out a proposal for organizing a Hall of Fame that reflects some level of consensus over who does and does not belong. There will, of course, continue to be debate over who does and does not belong, but hopefully even those who disagree with the Hall’s selections can agree that it reflects the consensus of those who lived through the era on the matter of the best and most important players and other figures.

One place to start would be to adopt Bill Simmons’ pyramid idea, that is, assigning all Hall of Famers to one of five tiers, with the top tier (“the Pantheon”) reserved for the very best of the best and each subsequent tier containing progressively less esteemed players until the players with the shakiest cases show up on the bottom level. I know a lot of people don’t like the idea of “ranking” the best players, feeling it makes things too much of a competition and that it becomes a case of splitting hairs between specific players as you get further down the list; shouldn’t it be enough that a player is considered a Hall of Famer? Why belittle the guys perceived to have shakier cases by placing them on a lower level or considering them not “real” Hall of Famers? However, I think this would be a good compromise between the “small Hall” guys and the more liberal guys. The “small Hall” guys would have only the guys they would allow in on the top one or two levels, while still having all the other players on the lower levels. It would serve as a way to refocus and rekindle the debate and provide some necessary clarity to the Hall, reorganizing it by players’ importance to the game and thus better allowing people to appreciate its history. Depending on what kind of Hall of Fame we’re talking about, we could use different terminology to distinguish the levels, even naming each level (for example, Bronze/Silver/Gold) if circumstances warrant.

I have a couple of issues with Simmons’ specific implementation. First, Simmons’ pyramid distributes Hall of Famers across five physical floors of the pyramid. Actual Hall of Fames, however, tend to throw all their Hall of Famers into a single literal hall; they are museums first and Hall of Fames second. The Hall may be the room everyone gravitates to and even the most prominent room, but it’s still a single room. Even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a place that already vaguely looks like Simmons’ pyramid (and, incidentally, by all accounts a place that makes Cooperstown look like the model of integrity) throws all its Hall of Famers onto a single level of a six-level building; the closest thing to what Simmons might be talking about might be the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There are some points in this model’s favor, even from the perspective of the Halls themselves, as it provides a single place for you to be overwhelmed by the prestige and the eminent personalities all around you, to take it all in all at once, besides the fact it allows the Hall not to overwhelm the building’s place as a museum. But this consideration doesn’t completely invalidate the model; physical differences in the honoring of each Hall of Famer, such as a plaque made of different materials or placement on the floor, could distinguish players of different tiers, which could be indicated by the personality used. For example, each plaque could have one to five stars on it and we could refer to Hall of Fame members as one-star to five-star Hall of Famers. Or we could arrange the Hall as a spiral going around a larger building, connecting with the exhibits on each floor with each full turn or half-turn, each tier arranged in chronological order or in rough order of importance within each tier, up to the Pantheon taking up the entire top floor, with statues instead of mere plaques for each Pantheon member, and if the sport has a Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, or Wayne Gretzky, one single undisputed best player of all time, they get their statue in the center. This could be considered taking a cue from the Guggenheim Museum, which arranges its artifacts in a spiral one browses starting from the top and working their way down.

A simpler but perhaps more challenging problem has to do with the process of assigning a level to each member, which Simmons would do by taking the average score each member gets from an assignment committee, “rounded up”. The problem should be obvious: if the assignment committee consists of 50 people, 49 of them votes a member to level 1, and the 50th votes them to level 2, their average is 1.02, which gets rounded up to 2. That one single voter got them bumped up to level 2! It would seem that very few people would be selected to level 1 unless their election to the Hall at all was so tentative as to make it unlikely they would be elected in the first place. Considering part of the appeal of the pyramid for Simmons is to throw all the borderline candidates to level 1, this seems counterproductive. Even if we made a post facto argument that past decades were undeniably mistaken in putting someone in, and everyone votes them to level 1 because even those who would have voted for them agree it’s ridiculous to put them any higher, it’s hard to see how the bottom level would grow. Simmons seems to be counting on the assignment committee to disagree with the selection committee, and specifically to agree with his own judgments. (Rounding up has another, similar problem: it’s very easy for someone to get into the Pantheon just by racking up enough level 4 votes and a couple of level 5 votes to get their average just over four. “Small Hall” people would much rather round down, making it more difficult to get into higher levels; while that gives the Pantheon the opposite problem, requiring induction to be unanimous, a case could be made that if your average can’t top 2 you don’t deserve to be in level 2 or above anyway.)

Instead, I prefer to see each level and the ones above it as its own sub-Hall of Fame within the Hall of Fame. If you wish, you can consider only those in tier 2 and above “real” Hall of Famers, and “small Hall” people would prefer to restrict it to the top one or two tiers. As such, the procedure would go as follows:

  • The Selection Committee consists of a mixture of sportswriters (including bloggers), fans, players (possibly including existing Hall of Famers), coaches, historians of the sport, and other people involved with the sport and the media. The vote is weighted towards the writers, fans, and other people who have a good grasp of what it takes to get to each level and are familiar with each candidate’s case.
  • On the ballot, each voter must give each candidate a number from 1 to 5, signifying what level they would induct each candidate to, or leave it blank or mark it with a 0 to indicate that they would not elect that candidate at all.
  • A player must be given a number on 70% of the votes to be inducted, at which point they are inducted to the level at the 70th percentile of their vote. For example, to be inducted to the Pantheon at least 70% of the votes must vote you to the Pantheon. To be elected to level 3 at least 70% of the votes must put you on level 3 or above, and so on. This keeps it difficult to get inducted to the Hall and to each level; I originally considered making the threshold 60%, but I don’t want someone to get into the Pantheon when only 60% of voters agree he deserves it.
  • There may or may not be a limit on the number of players to be inducted (I would support limiting Pantheon inductions to one a year), but there is no limit on how many people may be voted in or voted to a particular level. A player that has received the necessary votes to be inducted to a particular level but is excluded due to yearly limits may have their induction postponed to the following year, but generally cannot fall below the lowest or highest level they were ever voted to.
  • If there is a difference between the median level a player is voted to and the 70th percentile, the player remains on the ballot in subsequent years; as with players pushed out due to yearly limits, they cannot fall below the lowest or highest level they were ever voted to. A player not inducted to the Hall must be chosen for induction on at least half of all ballots just to remain on the ballot the following year; a player with the votes to make the first tier must have at least half the votes naming him to the second tier in order to remain on the ballot for the chance to move up to the second tier, or else their future fate is remanded to the Historical Committee where it gets much tougher for a reassessment to find that a player was wrongfully kept out or elected to too low a level. A player may appear on fifteen ballots; once they have appeared on fifteen ballots, they are either inducted to whatever level they are voted to their final year, or the highest level they were ever voted to. (Alternatively, once a player has the votes for induction and aren’t kept out by numerical limits they are inducted to that level, but may be “re-inducted” to a higher level later.)

This is a similar system to the up/down approval voting system Deadspin and others would favor, but the addition of the pyramid and tier system turns it into a range voting variant, which for various reasons is probably the best voting system for achieving the best outcome without perverse incentives. The notion that “the first ballot is sacred” (which only succeeds in producing “second-ballot” Hall of Famers like Roberto Alomar) would become less relevant if the Pantheon (and possibly the tier or two below it) serves the role of separating the “elite” from the rank and file, and broadening the electorate beyond sportswriters helps keep people with agendas from hijacking the process. Ideally, we’d have a single vote to determine the legacy of each candidate, without candidates completely crowding each other off the ballot, without necessarily risking some induction ceremonies being too big (though more time can be devoted to players going in to higher tiers) or nonexistent, and without completely precluding reconsideration later, but only if a substantial enough number of people believe from the start that someone’s case merits reconsideration (that is, 5% of the electorate can’t keep someone who clearly doesn’t have a shot taking up space on the ballot for fifteen years).

So we have two different solutions to what seems to be the most obvious and agreed-upon problem with this year’s baseball Hall of Fame induction: an overabundance of qualified players crowding each other out because of the 10-player limit. A system similar to that of the Pro Football Hall of Fame would limit the number of candidates and make it easier to give each of the resulting finalists a straight-up up/down vote, but instituting a pyramid system would help fix some of the deeper, more systemic flaws and restore at least some prestige to America’s Halls of Fame among those who might feel it irredeemably lost.

2013 Pro Football Hall of Fame Watch – The Top 50 Active Resumes

Surefire first-ballot players:

  1. QB Peyton Manning
  2. QB Tom Brady
  3. LB Ray Lewis

No one else has been quite as productive for so long as these three. With Lewis starting his clock, the two quarterbacks whose names have been inextricably linked for the last decade are now our only two surefire first-ballot players.

Borderline first-ballot players:

  1. TE Tony Gonzalez
  2. S Ed Reed
  3. WR Randy Moss
  4. CB Champ Bailey
  5. QB Drew Brees
  6. DT Kevin Williams

Gonzalez would ordinarily be a surefire first-ballot guy, but no tight end has ever gone in first ballot; on the other hand, Gonzalez isn’t exactly a typical tight end. All told, Ed Reed’s honors compare pretty favorably with those of Moss, and I now like his chances of going in first ballot better than I did before, though it’s far from a surefire bet; Bailey remains an iffier proposition. It’s kind of hard to believe the lofty territory Brees is climbing into, where he’s arguably the fourth-best quarterback of the past decade behind Brady, Manning, and Brett Favre. He probably needs to stick around a few more years to really threaten the first ballot, though.

Surefire Hall of Famers:

  1. TE Antonio Gates
  2. CB Charles Woodson
  3. DT Richard Seymour
  4. S Troy Polamalu
  5. TE Jason Witten
  6. LB Brian Urlacher
  7. DE Julius Peppers
  8. DE Dwight Freeney
  9. LB DeMarcus Ware
  10. RB Adrian Peterson
  11. WR Andre Johnson
  12. CB Ronde Barber
  13. G Steve Hutchison

Peterson and Johnson arrive in this group just in time, because otherwise with the exception of Witten (don’t look now but he might be the best tight end of this decade), Ware (who only punched his ticket last year), and possibly Polamalu, this group would be nothing but a bunch of players on the tail end of their careers, no fewer than three of whom retired this offseason. Numbers 11-16 on last year’s list didn’t add any honors to their total, one of them had already retired, and now Urlacher has retired as well. Urlacher didn’t really have a strong enough resume for me to put him in the first-ballot conversation anyway (which jibes with the vibe some have that he was overrated) and there’s no way he’s getting in ahead of Ray Lewis; he might not even go in second ballot. A Manning/Favre situation this is not.

Peterson has about as strong a resume as you could expect from a running back in this era of typically truncated RB careers and multi-RB sets, especially impressive considering the mediocre-to-bad Vikings teams he’s had to play for. Funnily enough, Tiki has been more visible but probably doesn’t have a Hall of Fame resume, while his less-visible brother Ronde, who just retired, is far more likely to get in, though he’ll have to wait.

Borderline Hall of Famers:

  1. WR Larry Fitzgerald
  2. WR Steve Smith
  3. WR Wes Welker
  4. DE Jared Allen
  5. QB Aaron Rodgers
  6. WR Reggie Wayne
  7. LB Patrick Willis
  8. QB Eli Manning
  9. QB Michael Vick
  10. P Shane Lechler
  11. DE Haloti Ngata
  12. DE John Abraham
  13. CB Darrelle Revis
  14. RB Arian Foster
  15. WR Calvin Johnson
  16. QB Ben Roethlisberger
  17. OT Joe Thomas
  18. WR Brandon Marshall
  19. FB Vonta Leach
  20. KR Devin Hester
  21. K Adam Vinatieri
  22. RB Maurice Jones-Drew

Fitzgerald has a similar excuse to what Peterson had before last year, with his only good Cardinals teams coming with Kurt Warner at the helm, but he didn’t come nine yards short of an all-time record last year. Rodgers is interesting, as he’s shockingly elevated himself in just a few years into one of the best QBs in the league and a surefire first-ballot HOFer if he keeps it up… but that’s a pretty big “if”. He had a Pro-Bowl-caliber year last year, but a far cry from his masterful 2011; he could still end up being remembered as a flash-in-the-pan who was, for a brief time, one of the best QBs in the entire league, a figure on par with Brady and Manning who picked up a ring along the way, and one of the great what-could-have-been stories. Would that be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame? Maybe… but it’d be a pretty long wait.

Even more interesting would be Vinatieri: very few non-quarterbacks have been propelled into the Hall of Fame on the strength of their Super Bowls… but Vinatieri could be one of them, despite being a kicker, a position with only one other representative in the Hall at all. And while every quarterback with multiple Super Bowl wins is in the Hall of Fame except Jim Plunkett, they all have substantially better resumes than Roethlisberger (who has only two Pro Bowl selections), which is why he’s so low.

Need work:

  • S Adrian Wilson
  • LB Lance Briggs
  • QB Phillip Rivers
  • CB Nnamdi Asomugha

Not long after this comes a lot of offensive linemen with mediocre resumes all bunched up, including, potentially surprisingly, Jeff Saturday. He’s only been a class lineman since 2005 or so, not quite long enough for a HOF career. Considering his late start, could the lost 2011 “Suck for Luck” season for the Colts, and failure to add to his resume this past year, prove to be poison for his Hall of Fame chances?

Players to watch for the future (exclamation marks indicate players with resumes already strong enough to be among the top 50):

  • OT Jake Long (5th year)
  • RB Chris Johnson (5th year)!
  • RB Ray Rice (5th year)!
  • LB Clay Matthews (4th year)
  • DE Cameron Wake (4th year)
  • DT Ndamukong Suh (3rd year)
  • C Maurkice Pouncey (3rd year)
  • TE Rob Gronkowski (3rd year)
  • DE Jason Pierre-Paul (3rd year)
  • LB Navarro Bowman (3rd year)
  • LB Von Miller (2nd year)
  • WR A.J. Green (2nd year)
  • DE J.J. Watt (2nd year)
  • LB Aldon Smith (2nd year)
  • QB Andrew Luck (Rookie)
  • QB Robert Griffin III (Rookie)
  • QB Russell Wilson (Rookie)
  • LB Luke Kuechly (Rookie)

Can J.J. Watt repeat the torrid performance of his 2012 season? And could three of the five best quarterbacks of this decade turn out to have all been drafted the same year?

Players to watch for the Class of 2017:

  • RB LaDainian Tomlinson
  • S Brian Dawkins
  • DT Jason Taylor
  • WR Chad Johnson
  • QB Donovan McNabb
  • C Olin Kreutz

LDT should go in first-ballot, while Dawkins has an outside shot and Taylor has none but should get in without too much delay. Johnson and McNabb are iffier bets to get in at all; will the HOF voters bring themselves to vote for someone who named himself “Chad Ochocinco”, resume aside? McNabb’s career consists of some pretty good quality production for a number of years, but never quite great, with no All-Pro team appearances and no rings; he’s going to be hotly debated. Both are more likely to get in than not, but they’ll have a long wait, as will Kreutz who isn’t too far behind them.

Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2013

The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 44 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 11 at-large writers.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2007 season will be eligible for induction in 2013.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside two senior candidates, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, for a total of seven. From this list, at least four and no more than seven people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2013 is:

Andre Reed
Jonathan Ogden
Michael Strahan
Aeneas Williams
Larry Allen
Curley Culp
Dave Robinson

Hall of Fame Game: Rams v. Giants

For @PTI and @RealMikeWilbon: The Case Against Hines Ward for the Hall of Fame

So I don’t know if you heard (apparently some guy named Manning was also in the news today), but Hines Ward has officially called it a career. As the relationship between Ward and the Steelers slowly sputtered to an end over the winter, every time it was brought up on Pardon the Interruption Tony and Mike described him as a surefire Hall of Famer. Back in February, he didn’t appear on my Top 50 Active Resumes, and honestly didn’t come very close – in other words, I had him just as surefire not to get in. The last time the PTI guys brought him up, when the Steelers finally cut him, they expressed incredulity that anyone would disagree with their assessment. He has all the receiving records for the vaunted Steelers! He’s eighth all time in receptions and 18th in receiving yards! He has two Super Bowl rings! How can you not put him in the Hall of Fame?

Two words: Passing. League.

Prepare to hear those two words a lot for the next few decades and possibly the remainder of the history of the league whenever the Hall of Fame merits of any wide receiver to play this century come up. Simply put, it’s hard to overstate how inflated today’s passing and especially receiving stats are compared to earlier eras. Every single one of the players ahead of Ward on the all-time receptions list played at least four seasons as Ward’s contemporary (you have to go down to #12 Art Monk to find someone who retired in the 90s) and only Cris Carter didn’t play during at least half of Ward’s career. Only four players ahead of Ward on the receiving yards list didn’t play at least one season as his contemporary. Even discounting that, being the best receiver on the traditionally-run-heavy Steelers doesn’t mean as much as you might think – only two Steelers receivers are in the Hall, and not only did Lynn Swann have a very long wait he seems to have gotten in mostly on the back of his memorable Super Bowl catches, not his actual career.

The smoking gun on Ward’s resume is this: although he made the 2nd-team All-Pro three times, not once was he named to the first team. Over the course of his career, the following receivers were named 1st-team AP All-Pro (and thus, were considered better than Ward) at least once: Randy Moss, Antonio Freeman, Marvin Harrison, Carter, Terrell Owens, David Boston, Torry Holt, Muhsin Muhammad, Steve Smith, Chad Johnson, Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Wes Welker, Roddy White, Reggie Wayne, Calvin Johnson. Moss, Owens, Harrison, Chad and Andre Johnson, and Welker were named multiple times; Jimmy Smith, Rod Smith, Wayne, and Fitzgerald were named 2nd-team All-Pro in at least two different years Ward wasn’t; Holt, Steve Smith, and Calvin Johnson were also named 2nd-team All-Pro in a year Ward wasn’t. Throw in the Hall’s infuriating inability to pick between Andre Reed, Carter, and Tim Brown, and how can you even find room for Ward to get in at some point?

Shouldn’t a Hall of Famer make more than four Pro Bowls in a 14-year career, especially if they were never one of the two best receivers in the league in any year? Do Super Bowl rings even matter for non-quarterbacks? Would Tony and Mike disagree with my February post that, just among active players, the Johnsons, Moss, Fitzgerald, Steve Smith, Welker, and Wayne are all more deserving of the Hall of Fame than Ward – before you even get to retired players who aren’t eligible yet like Owens, Harrison, Holt, or Isaac Bruce, or the aforementioned eligible players that haven’t gotten in yet?

Perhaps, like Swann, another beloved Steeler receiver can get in late in his eligibility despite a questionable career. It is, after all, the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Great. But if you still want to read more, you can browse through this post from January and the associated comments.

2012 Pro Football Hall of Fame Watch – The Top 50 Active Resumes

Surefire first-ballot players:

  1. QB Peyton Manning
  2. QB Tom Brady
  3. LB Ray Lewis

No one else has been quite as productive for so long as these three. I can’t imagine this is the end of the line for Manning, partly because he just has to play one game to reset the clock, partly because of who else would be up at the same time as him. More on this below.

Borderline first-ballot players:

  1. TE Tony Gonzalez
  2. RB LaDainian Tomlinson
  3. S Ed Reed
  4. CB Champ Bailey
  5. S Brian Dawkins
  6. QB Drew Brees
  7. DT Kevin Williams

Gonzalez would ordinarily be a surefire first-ballot guy, but tight ends getting in on the first ballot is rare to unprecedented, and he’s pretty close to the end of the surefire territory. More likely than not, LDT is going in on the first ballot as well; Reed and Bailey are far iffier and probably depends on who else is out there their first ballot. It’s kind of hard to believe the lofty territory Brees is climbing into, where he’s arguably the fourth-best quarterback of the past decade behind Brady, Manning, and Favre. He probably needs to stick around a few more years to really threaten the first ballot, though.

Surefire Hall of Famers:

  1. TE Antonio Gates
  2. CB Charles Woodson
  3. DT Richard Seymour
  4. S Troy Polamalu
  5. LB Brian Urlacher
  6. DT Jason Taylor
  7. TE Jason Witten
  8. DE Julius Peppers
  9. DE Dwight Freeney
  10. CB Ronde Barber
  11. G Steve Hutchison
  12. LB DeMarcus Ware

Realistically, given his position, Gates’ chances of getting in on the first ballot are basically nil at this point. Getting to the Pro Bowl this year improves his case, but he didn’t really deserve it. Charles Woodson had an All-Pro year that gets him much closer to the first-ballot conversation. Jason Taylor is retiring, and while some people may only know him from Dancing with the Stars, he has a resume to make it into Canton pretty quickly. Ware isn’t higher because he hasn’t actually been doing this for all that long; who knows what his ceiling is?

Borderline Hall of Famers:

  1. WR Chad Johnson
  2. QB Donovan McNabb
  3. RB Adrian Peterson
  4. C Olin Kreutz
  5. WR Andre Johnson
  6. WR Larry Fitzgerald
  7. WR Steve Smith
  8. QB Aaron Rodgers
  9. DE Jared Allen
  10. WR Wes Welker
  11. QB Michael Vick
  12. P Shane Lechler
  13. WR Reggie Wayne
  14. DE John Abraham
  15. DT Kris Jenkins
  16. CB Darrelle Revis
  17. QB Ben Roethlisberger
  18. KR Devin Hester
  19. QB Eli Manning
  20. K Adam Vinatieri
  21. RB Maurice Jones-Drew

Will the HOF voters bring themselves to vote for someone who named himself “Chad Ochocinco”, resume aside? McNabb’s career appears to be over with some pretty good quality production for a number of years, but never quite great, with no All-Pro team appearances and no rings; he’s going to be hotly debated. Peterson is getting pretty close to punching his ticket to Canton already, despite playing for a number of bad Vikings teams; ditto Fitzgerald and his only good Cardinals teams coming with Kurt Warner at the helm.

Rodgers is interesting, as he’s shockingly elevated himself in just a few years into one of the best QBs in the league and a surefire first-ballot HOFer if he keeps it up… but that’s a pretty big “if”. If he somehow falls off the face of the Earth next year and never gets it back, he’ll be remembered as a flash-in-the-pan who was, for a brief time, one of the best QBs in the entire league, a figure on par with Brady and Manning who picked up a ring along the way, and one of the great what-could-have-been stories. Would that be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame? Maybe… but it’d be a pretty long wait. Even more interesting would be Vinatieri: very few non-quarterbacks have been propelled into the Hall of Fame on the strength of their Super Bowls… but Vinatieri could be one of them, despite being a kicker, a position with only one other representative in the Hall at all. And while every quarterback with multiple Super Bowl wins is in the Hall of Fame except Jim Plunkett, they all have substantially better resumes than Roethlisberger and Manning (only two Pro Bowl selections apiece), which is why those two are so low.

Devin Hester has stated his intent to become the first kick returner in the Hall, but his already long-shot candidacy may have actually taken a hit this year, as Patrick Peterson beat him out for the Pro Bowl and All-Pro honors. Worse, Peterson’s a rookie; what if Hester isn’t even the best kick returner of the next decade? Dante Hall already beat him out for first-team honors on the all-decade team for the last decade. What Hester may have going against him, no matter how gaudy the numbers he puts up, is that he came in an era where more people than ever were returning more kicks for more yards and more touchdowns than ever, at least before the NFL moved up kickoffs this season. If he’s returning kicks in an era more like past eras, he probably still stands out, but he’s probably not breaking records left and right.

Need work:

  • S Adrian Wilson
  • DE Haloti Ngata
  • LB Lance Briggs
  • QB Phillip Rivers
  • CB Nnamdi Asomugha

G Brian Waters would be next. Not long after this comes a lot of offensive linemen with mediocre resumes all bunched up, including some potentially surprising names, Jeff Saturday and Flozell Adams, the latter of whom has never made an All-Pro team. Saturday’s only been a class lineman since 2005 or so, not quite long enough for a HOF career. Considering his late start, could this lost season for the Colts prove to be poison for his Hall of Fame chances?

Players to watch for the future (exclamation marks indicate players with resumes already strong enough to be among the top 50):

  • LB Patrick Willis (5th year)!
  • OT Joe Thomas (5th year)!
  • OT Jake Long (4th year)
  • RB Chris Johnson (4th year)
  • LB Clay Matthews (3rd year)
  • RB Arian Foster (3rd year)
  • DT Ndamukong Suh (2nd year)
  • C Maurkice Pouncey (2nd year)
  • TE Rob Gronkowski (2nd year)
  • TE Jimmy Graham (2nd year)
  • QB Cam Newton (Rookie)
  • LB Von Miller (Rookie)
  • QB Andy Dalton (Rookie)
  • WR A.J. Green (Rookie)

Cam Newton set the single-season record for touchdowns by a QB, as a rookie, three-fourths of the way through the season. He may do more than any other single quarterback, more than Vick, Young, or Tebow, to redefine the position.

Players to watch for the Class of 2016:

  • QB Brett Favre
  • WR Randy Moss
  • WR Terrell Owens
  • G Alan Faneca
  • S Darren Sharper

Why are we looking at the list for 2016 instead of 2017? Because if we looked at players who retired after the just-completed season, we wouldn’t have looked at Moss or Owens last year, and we’d have looked at Favre the last four seasons at least.

Despite how he’s acted in recent years, Favre is going in on the first ballot unless Peyton Manning is done. That would make it interesting: two all-time first-ballot quarterbacks, seemingly from different eras, set to go in at the same time. Would one go first-ballot at the expense of the other (probably Manning at the expense of Favre), or would a huge rarity happen and two players at the same position go in in the same year? It once seemed unthinkable that Favre or Manning wouldn’t go in first ballot, but unless Manning can play again it could happen solely because of timing. Some might consider it karma that Favre’s constant retirement-delaying could cost him first-ballot status.

Moss is borderline and his attitude issues, combined with going in the year after both Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt (only one of whom at most is going in in 2015), could cost him, although Moss is considered one of the best wide receivers of his era, which you can’t quite say about Bruce and Holt. Everyone else is going to have to wait. Although both Moss and Owens have attitude issues, Owens’ issues are perceived to be worse and he generally isn’t considered as good a player, so Moss is going in first. Faneca will more than likely get in, but expect him to wait a while. Sharper’s chances I’m really skeptical of. Five Pro Bowls in a fourteen-year career doesn’t really cut it; if he gets in it’ll be because his All-Decade team membership saves him.