Cantonmetrics: Introduction and Guide

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Cantonmetrics is a project to list, track, and compare players under consideration for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, with an emphasis on metrics that can be used to compare players across positions and eras. Cantonmetrics 1.0 launched in 2022 for the 2023 induction cycle, using a series of images to list and compare candidates. Beginning in 2025 for the 2026 induction cycle, Cantonmetrics 2.0 hosts most of the information on a publicly-available Google spreadsheet, for searchability, ease of updating, and to reflect the likelihood of stasis in certain categories. Read here for more on the thinking and history behind the project leading up to the launch of Cantonmetrics 1.0. This page is intended to help you navigate and understand the spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet consists of the following tabs. If a tab is listed with an abbreviation, the columns that appear on that tab will have the abbreviation listed next to their name in the explanation below.

• Active/Recently Retired (Act) lists active players, and players that have not yet been retired long enough to be eligible for induction in the modern era process, with credentials worthy of consideration for induction into Canton. Players are listed in order of their Hall of Fame Monitor score from Pro Football Reference (see below). Note that this is only updated upon the conclusion of each season.
• Modern Era (Mod) lists players eligible for induction in the modern era process. Players are considered “modern era” if they played at least part of their careers in the last 25 years and been retired at least five. Thus, a player may be considered “modern era” for up to 20 years. 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.
• Senior (Snr) lists players that have aged out of the modern-era pool. These players must go through the more restrictive senior candidate process. Players are generally sorted similarly to modern-era players; however, players that have advanced the same distance in the senior process are sorted in descending order of age, with the oldest living players listed first, followed by deceased players with those that have spent the least time in the senior pool listed first.
• Coaches (Coa)/Contributors (Ctb) list non-players under consideration for induction in the Coach and Contributor categories. (These receive two different abbreviations because some columns only apply to coaches.) Only people that have actually been named as part of the process are listed; this doesn’t attempt to track the credentials of active coaches. Candidates are generally sorted similarly to senior candidates.
• The 20s All-Decade Tracker lists active and retired players by position and lists their stats, honors, and metrics within the decade of the 2020s only. It attempts to determine which players are likely to make the All-Decade Team of the 2020s, which is expected to be published at some point after the 2029 season. As with the Active/Recently Retired tab, it is only updated upon the conclusion of each season.
• The All-Snub Team lists the top players that have been eligible for induction into Canton for at least one cycle, but have not been inducted and were not named as modern-era finalists in the most recent cycle. The top 20 qualifying players in the Monitor are listed along with the top players at each position that fill out the “team”, with their positions in bold; there’s also an All-Senior Candidate team consisting of the top senior candidates at each position, with All-Senior Candidate team members not on the All-Snub Team having their position marked in italics. If a player’s name is stricken, that means it’s suspected that the player has been blackballed by at least some voters due to various off-field moral failings, and they do not count towards the top 20 players or the All-Snub or All-Senior Candidate teams. This list is based on the Monitor alone, so it’s not meant to indicate that these players actually are snubs or even that they should necessarily be inducted, only that they’re among the top non-inductees in one particular metric.
• Top Legends Scores attempts to list all players, inducted or otherwise, who played the bulk of their careers after 1950 and have a Legends Score (see below) of 20 or more.

Each tab uses the following columns, in order:

• Born and Age (Snr, Coa, Ctb) list the year a candidate was born and how old they will be as of the induction year under consideration, if they’re living. If a candidate is deceased, these two columns are merged and show a candidate’s birth and death years.
• Pos (Act, Mod, Snr) lists the position Pro Football Reference lists for each player. Note that PFR lists all defensive backs as DBs only; I’ve attempted to more finely sort players between cornerbacks and safeties. I also list players as “KR” (kick/punt returner) or “ST” (special teamer) regardless of what position PFR considers them to have if that’s primarily where they earned their postseason honors.
• Career (Mod, Snr) or Rkie Year (Act) lists each player’s rookie and (if applicable) final seasons. In certain circumstances a player’s “final” season may not match what’s listed on Pro Football Reference, generally if they were part of a team’s active roster but never played in a regular season game. The final season is whatever their final year is considered to be for Hall of Fame eligibility purposes.
• Year Elig. (Mod) or Yrs Snr (Snr) indicates how many years a player has been on whatever ballot they’re currently on. The All-Snub Team list uses Year Elig. with senior candidates having numbers over 20, listed in bold.
• Yrs Left (Mod) indicates how many years a player has left in the modern-era pool after this year, before they enter the senior pool. If the number is 0, listed in bold, that means if they don’t get inducted this year, they have to settle for the senior pool.
• Last 5 Years on Ballot (Mod, Snr, Coa, Ctb) tracks candidates’ performances in the last five years of the selection process. I only use the last five years to minimize the amount of space taken up and to avoid showing years when players on the modern-era ballot were still active. The following abbreviations are used:
  • UNL (Mod) indicates years when a player was eligible but was not named even on the initial list of nominees. If a senior candidate was not nominated in a given year, that year is simply rendered in black with no text.
  • PRE (Mod) or SN (Snr) indicates that a player was named among the initial batch of over one hundred nominees.
  • Qtr (Mod) indicates that a player was named among the group of 50 candidates advanced by the screening committee created for the 2025 process. I consider these “quarterfinalists” by analogy to the below.
  • Semi (Mod) indicates that a player was named among the 25 semifinalists by the selection committee.
  • S# (Snr) or C# (Coa, Ctb) indicate that a candidate made it past the cutdown to the number of candidates indicated. The Hall has been somewhat inconsistent with the nomenclature used for non-modern era stages, so I just note the number of candidates named at each stage to minimize confusion.
  • Fin (Snr, Coa, Ctb) indicates that a candidate was advanced to the full selection committee for selection for induction, but was voted down or otherwise failed to achieve the necessary number of votes. Note that after the advanced candidates are named but before the results of the vote are made public, the current year’s column will be populated with “Fin” for the candidates advanced, even though one or more candidates will in fact be inducted.
  • T15, T10, and T7 (Mod) refer to the three stages of cuts that the fifteen modern-era finalists are subject to.
• Credentials (Ctb) indicates the reason(s) why someone is under consideration for induction as a contributor. Coaches under consideration primarily for their credentials as assistants will also see the remaining columns replaced with a brief description of their careers and accomplishments as assistants.
• HC Career (Coa) indicates the first and last years a coach was active as a head coach. This is placed after coaches’ recent advancement in the process, not before as with players, because coaches are listed on the same tab as contributors and this saves me from having to figure out how to fill two different spaces for contributors (and, perhaps more importantly, assistant coaches).

The next few columns (for Act, Mod, Snr) list the primary postseason honors that are considered when assessing a player’s worthiness for the Hall of Fame, which allows for comparing players across positions and eras. I and others consider them more important than stats, which can’t be compared across positions and can be misleading considering the evolution of the game over time. You can use Pro Football Reference’s Hall of Fame Monitor charts to compare all players at a given position that played their entire careers after 1955, including inducted players.

• All-Dec (also Coa) refers to the All-Decade Teams named by the Hall of Fame. It lists the decade a given player or coach was named to the team; if someone was named to multiple All-Decade Teams, the number of teams they were named to is indicated. This is also where I indicate if a player made the AFL All-Time Team. If a player that’s not a kicker or punter was named at a special teams position, they are indicated by an asterisk.
• MVPs refer to the number of MVP awards won. I include this primarily because it factors into the Monitor, but it plays little role in my analysis, in part because only one player wins it each year and most players that win it multiple times are shoo-ins for Canton regardless.
• 1st AP refers to the number of times a player was named first-team All-Pro. Although the AP’s All-Pro teams are the most well-known, they have never been the sole selector of All-Pro teams, and the NFL recognizes most selectors of All-Pro teams in its Record and Fact Book equally, with Hall of Fame voters considering all recognized All-Pro teams and the Hall itself listing all selectors to name an inductee to the All-Pro team. Besides the AP, the Pro Football Writers of America and the Sporting News currently name All-Pro teams recognized by the NFL. The “All” column lists the number of years a player was named first-team All-Pro by any selector, while the “AP” column just lists a player’s AP first-team All-Pros. Note that the AP only began naming All-Pro teams in 1940; for senior candidates active before then, I list the number of All-Pro teams that Pro Football Reference, which normally only counts AP All-Pro teams, considers them to have in the AP column, marked with an asterisk. This usually means the United Press (which eventually became UPI) All-Pro team, with PFR using other selectors during the period before the United Press started naming All-Pro teams. The All column is blank if there was at least one year before 1943 when a player was named to an All-Pro team listed on their Pro Football Reference profile, but not one that remained active in 1943 or later, since I have no way of verifying whether the league or Hall considers that team to “count”.
• PBs list the number of Pro Bowls a player is credited for.
• In place of the above, coaches, in addition to All-Decade teams, list COTYs (Coach of the Year awards), Record (their wins and losses as a head coach), and HC SBs (Super Bowls, or pre-Super Bowl NFL championships, won as head coach).

The next two columns (again applying to Act, Mod, and Snr) reflect two different efforts to boil down a player’s Hall of Fame worthiness to a single number.

• The Legends Score (Leg Sco) is a measure devised by the Future Football Legends website using a simple point system to measure players based on their postseason honors, although I’ve made some tweaks to it to reflect the actual thinking of Hall of Fame voters and to align it with the Hall of Fame Monitor. Honors earned at special teams positions do not count. Only players that started their careers in 1950 (when the modern Pro Bowl started) or later are guaranteed to receive Legends Scores, with players starting their careers in 1943 or later receiving scores if their score is particularly outstanding. If any of the point totals below have an asterisk, it means I’ve changed them relative to the original Legends Score.
  • For each year selected All-Pro:
    • *2 points for being named 2nd Team All-Pro by any selector
    • *3 points for being named 2nd Team All-Pro by all selectors to name 2nd teams
    • *4 points for being named 1st Team All-Pro by any selector (overrides 2nd Team All-Pro points)
    • *5 points for being named 1st Team All-Pro by all selectors
  • 1 point per initial Pro Bowl or AFL All-Star Team Selection
  • *1/2 point for participating in the Pro Bowl as an alternate
    • Note that I only have this information for the seasons of 1950, 1975, 1995, 1997, and 1999 on, as those are the seasons where Wikipedia has indicated replacement selections. For all other years, all selections are assumed to be initial selections.
  • 15 points per 1st Team All-Decade Selection (including AFL All-Time Team)
  • 9 points per 2nd Team All-Decade Selection (including AFL All-Time Team)
  • 12 points per general All-Decade Selection (no 1st or 2nd Teams designated)
  • 9 points per regular season MVP
  • *5 points per Defensive Player of the Year Award (overridden if named regular season MVP the same year)
  • 8 points per Super Bowl MVP
  • 5 points for non-MVP Super Bowl Winning QBs
• The Hall of Fame Monitor (PFR Monitor) is a more complex formula devised by Pro Football Reference to estimate a player’s chances of making the Hall of Fame. In addition to the postseason honors listed in the previous columns (plus the Defensive Player of the Year award), it also factors in excellence at various statistical milestones as well as PFR’s own Approximate Value measurement. A full breakdown of how the Monitor is calculated is available at the PFR website.

Finally, there are two more columns for active players:

• QB SBs (Act) are the number of Super Bowl rings won by quarterbacks only.
• Projection (Act) is my estimation of whether a player will make the Hall of Fame, and if so, whether they’ll be inducted first-ballot, if their careers ended after the most recently completed season. In other words, it does not attempt to project the future shape of their career, only whether they’ve done enough to make the Hall of Fame right now. It is based on how their resume stacks up against other players at their position that played their entire careers after the AFL-NFL merger and whether the Hall voters saw fit to induct them, based solely on All-Decade selections, first-team All-Pro selections, Pro Bowls, and (for quarterbacks) Super Bowl rings. I also factor in receiving yards for wide receivers as whether or not they end up inducted can be more unpredictable based on postseason honors alone than other positions.
  • Surefire means all players with clearly better resumes (if any) were inducted (first-ballot if applicable), as were players with inferior resumes that were still better than at least one non-inducted player.
  • Probable means all players with clearly better resumes were inducted (first-ballot if applicable), and the resume in question is clearly better than any non-inducted resume, but there aren’t any inducted players with resumes better than the non-inducted resumes but clearly worse than the resume in question. In other words, I can’t rule out that the resume falls into the “borderline” territory, but just happens to be higher than any non-inducted player has reached.
  • Borderline means the player has a better resume than at least one inductee but a worse resume than at least one non-inductee (or, if they’re “borderline first-ballot”, a better resume than at least one first-ballot inductee but a worse resume than at least one player that was not inducted first-ballot).
  • Unlikely HOF means the player has a worse resume than any inductee.