Each year, the Pro Football Hall of Fame names at least 15 modern-era players (more if there’s a tie for the last spot), narrowed down from the semifinalists named in November, who played at least part of their careers in the past 25 years and have been retired at least 5, as finalists for induction to the Hall of Fame. Before Super Bowl LIX, the panel will meet virtually and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to seven, from which at least three and no more than five will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The committee will also consider three senior candidates, a coach, and a contributor, each selected by their own individual committees earlier in December, from which at least one and no more than three will be selected for induction. Unless they have only a handful of years of eligibility left, modern-era players that are named finalists are almost always inducted eventually, so this provides a glimpse at what players can look forward to eventual 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. 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, “Semi” if they were among the 25 semifinalists (this stage), 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.
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. 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. Statistical categories specific to particular positions are not listed here. Finally, the “Semifinalists Not Advancing” section lists those semifinalists that were not named to the list of finalists.
As I thought might be the case, Earl Thomas joins the All-Snub Team after being left off the list of finalists despite the fact he’d be the sixth first-year player there – but he certainly could have been named, because the committee had second thoughts about the inclusion of Rodney Harrison in last year’s finalists. Instead, they replaced him with Steve Smith, the wide receiver who’d been left out at the cutdown to 15 in recent years with the highest Monitor and the only one of the three who’d ever been named first-team All-Pro – and, notably, someone with a higher Monitor than any player left at the altar at this stage by nearly 20 points. I approve.
Turns out the contributor committee still isn’t ready to induct Robert Kraft yet – perhaps worried about how it would look inducting Kraft right after the documentary series that was widely perceived as propaganda for a Kraft induction – and instead selected Ralph Hay, someone who might well be deserving of induction as the man that hosted the founding meeting of what would become the NFL, but is widely considered a long shot. (After the vote but before it was officially announced, one of the selectors leaked the decision to ESPN and trashed the move, saying “unless you are an NFL historian, you don’t know who Ralph Hay is”, which according to Clark Judge should disqualify them from serving on any of the committees.)
More notably, Jim Tyrer is now one vote away from induction despite ending his life in a murder-suicide, whatever the extenuating circumstances. If you’re hoping for Tyrer to finally get his day in Canton, however, Frank Cooney – a strong supporter of Tyrer’s induction – reported the day the senior finalists were announced that four voters had already told him they couldn’t vote for Tyrer. I could see even his steadfast supporters deciding to bail on him in the name of filling out all three inductions and voting for Sterling Sharpe, Maxie Baughan, and Mike Holmgren. In the end, Tyrer may end up getting screwed by the new voting format that forces candidates to compete against each other even at the last hurdle before selection. His best hope going forward, assuming the rules don’t change again, may well be for the coach and contributor committees to advance candidates that the full selection committee doesn’t want to vote for.
That may not happen next year, and not just if the contributors’ committee decides it’s Kraft’s time. I had assumed the coaches’ committee had consciously decided not to include Bill Belichick (and Pete Carroll) on their lists of candidates for induction because of the possibility that either one could return to coaching, but it seems there was confusion as to when they were actually eligible under the new rules; the Hall’s press release on the cutdown to 12 still says that people that last coached in 2023 would be eligible for the class of 2025, but there seems to be some scuttlebutt – possibly confirmed by the Hall itself to the voters – that this refers to the calendar year of 2023, not the 2023 season, and now that the season extends past New Year’s on an annual basis, Belichick and Carroll won’t be eligible for induction until 2026. (Will this affect the future eligibility of modern-era players?) Although his contract with UNC reportedly allows him to leave for relatively cheap without coaching a game, it’s entirely possible that if Belichick is coaching the Tar Heels relatively happily, or at least isn’t being linked to any NFL jobs, by this time next year, the coaches’ committee will see fit to advance him for potential induction.
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