Cantonmetrics

Introducing Cantonmetrics 2.0

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Over the course of the past week, the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced the figures to advance to the next stage of consideration in all four of the categories from which people can potentially be inducted into Canton, which makes it as good a time as any to roll out the next evolution of the Cantonmetrics feature.

The main change is that the charts that have made up the Cantonmetrics posts in the past can now be found on a searchable Google spreadsheet, which can be found HERE.

In addition to dynamically updating the lists of retired players, coaches, and contributors after each cutdown announcement, as well as the list of active players after each season is complete, the spreadsheet also contains tabs for the All-Snub Team and my attempt to track the contenders for the All-Decade Team of the 2020s. In addition to the metrics already being tracked and the Hall of Fame Monitor, all tabs now contain the Legends Score, an attempt to measure players based on postseason honors only based on a measure devised by the Future Football Legends website, but which I’ve made some adjustments to. I expect to make more changes, adjustments, and improvements next offseason as well.

This page contains more information about how to read the spreadsheet as well as a general introduction to the concept of Cantonmetrics, and I’m adding a link to the top bar as well. I may decide to embed the spreadsheet directly onto a static page, but I’m not sure exactly what to include on it to justify the separate existence of the introduction page, if in fact I need to justify not simply placing it on there to begin with.

After the jump, some thoughts about this particular round of cuts.

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Cantonmetrics: 2026 Preliminary Nominees

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Offseason Snapshot

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.

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Cantonmetrics: 2025 Inductions and Offseason Snapshot

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Congratulations to Antonio Gates, Jared Allen, Eric Allen, and Sterling Sharpe on their induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Now it’s time to look at how this year’s selection process affects who the players most likely to get in next year are, and with the 2024 season fully at a close, what active and recently-retired players have most built their resumes for eventual induction into Canton.

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Morgan Wick’s Shadow Pro Football Hall of Fame: Initial Ballot

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As I wrote earlier, I’m working on a “shadow Hall of Fame” to settle the debate over how exclusive the Pro Football Hall of Fame is by sorting players into five tiers, adopting Bill Simmons’ “pyramid” model for Halls of Fame. You can help by voting on the initial ballot, which contains 500 players, 50 coaches, and 50 contributors, telling me which level you think each player should be inducted to or if they should be inducted at all.

The players listed on the ballot consist of:

  • All current Hall of Famers
  • All players to make at least the final 50 modern-era or senior candidate lists in the 2025 round of balloting, and have a Hall of Fame Monitor at Pro Football Reference over 40
  • Any other players with a Monitor over 60
  • Any players that started their career before 1955 and therefore don’t have a Monitor that made the list of preliminary senior candidates
  • Any players that have been inducted as part of Not In Hall Of Fame‘s Hall of Fame Revisited project because of their contributions in the NFL
  • Other players added at my discretion, with a broad goal of 375 players with Monitor scores and 125 without

This does not include a number of players that people have called for induction; you may add them in the Other category or leave a comment here or elsewhere vouching for them. The coaches and contributors consist of current Hall of Famers and people on the current ballots that I consider particularly deserving or likely to be inducted; these are subject to straight up/down votes, but you can also vote on if they should be sorted into tiers like the players.

The ballot is located HERE.

After the jump, if you need more help to decide what level to vote players to, I’ve adapted Simmons’ descriptions of each level in his proposed baseball and basketball Halls to the football context to serve as rules of thumb. Note that these have been only lightly edited from what Simmons wrote in each context and don’t necessarily translate to the football Hall, and I don’t necessarily agree that these are or should be criteria to separate the levels.

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Introducing Morgan Wick’s Shadow Pro Football Hall of Fame

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Less than a week after the Class of 2022 was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Deion Sanders implicitly trashed it. In a video running just over a minute and 45 seconds, Sanders claimed that “the Hall of Fame ain’t the Hall of Fame no more”, that it had become a “free for all” where players that were merely good could be inducted, that the Hall should be for “people who changed the game” and not those who just had “three or four good years”.

Sanders didn’t name any names of any specific players that he felt didn’t belong in Canton, but a fellow Hall of Famer did call out a specific member of the 2022 class as undeserving and even problematic. Two months earlier, Bruce Smith, the NFL’s all-time sack leader, questioned the reasoning behind the induction of Tony Boselli as part of the 2022 class, specifically that people were citing Boselli’s performance against Smith in a 1996 playoff game. Using players’ performances against other Hall of Famers as criteria for induction, in Smith’s view, would erode the “exclusive fraternity” of Hall of Famers by incentivizing players to play up their performance against other Hall of Famers, creating “friction and discord”. Smith also noted that Boselli’s accomplishments weren’t quite comparable to other left tackles since the quarterback he was protecting, Mark Brunell, was left-handed, meaning Boselli wasn’t protecting his blind side.

Boselli had a relatively brief seven-year career, but was highly acclaimed with five Pro Bowl selections and was named first-team All-Pro three times as well as being selected to the All-Decade Team of the 1990s. It would certainly seem that the people who watched him play felt he could have protected the blind side of a right-handed quarterback at a level comparable to the best to do so, and the 1996 playoff game is just a single piece of evidence in favor of that. His Hall of Fame Monitor score at Pro Football Reference is 80.68, behind only two tackles not in Canton: Jim Tyrer and the only-recently-retired Jason Peters.

A more questionable 2022 inductee, if you wanted to do so, would be Sam Mills, who was named first-team All-Pro by the AP only once (though he was named to the first team by other selectors on two other occasions) in an 11-year career that got him named to the Pro Bowl five times (tied for the fewest of any post-merger linebacker in Canton), resulting in a Monitor score of only 55.78. Dave Wilcox is the only linebacker with a lower score in Canton, and among inside linebackers Mills has the lowest score by over seven points. Also worth noting is that year’s senior inductee, Cliff Branch, whose 8685 receiving yards is the second-fewest of any wide receiver in Canton who played his entire career after the merger (not counting Devin Hester), and Drew Pearson, unlike Branch, was named to an All-Decade team.

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Cantonmetrics: 2025 Finalists

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Offseason Snapshot

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.

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Cantonmetrics: 2025 Semifinalists

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Each November, the Pro Football Hall of Fame names at least 25 modern-era players (more if there’s a tie for the last spot), narrowed down from the candidates named last month, who played at least part of their careers in the past 25 years and have been retired at least 5, as semifinalists for induction to the Hall of Fame. No more than five modern-era players are inducted each year, so most of the players listed below won’t be inducted this year and some won’t necessarily be inducted at all, but it’s still important to see what players the Hall of Fame voters consider most worthy of induction into the Hall among the currently-eligible players, and we can look at their relevant honors and argue over which players are worthy of induction. 

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Cantonmetrics: 2025 Coach and Contributor Semifinalists

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Offseason Snapshot | Player Quarterfinalists

This week, as part of its revised selection process, the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s committees to advance candidates in the Coach and Contributor categories reduced the number of candidates from 12 or 25, respectively, earlier in the month to nine “semifinalists” in each category. Each committee will meet virtually later this month to choose one finalist in each category to advance to the full selection committee this January, who will compete with each other and three senior candidates for up to three slots for induction. As such most, if not all, of these candidates won’t be inducted this year and may not be inducted at all, but we can still see who the Hall of Fame voters consider most worthy among the candidates in each category, who might be likely to be chosen by the committees in future years, and look at the relevant honors and argue over who should be inducted. 

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Cantonmetrics: 2025 Quarterfinalists

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Offseason Snapshot

Starting this year, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is naming at least 50 modern-era players (more if there’s a tie for the last spot), narrowed down from the nominees named in September, who played at least part of their careers in the past 25 years and have been retired at least 5, as candidates for induction to the Hall of Fame. No more than five modern-era players are inducted each year, so at least 90% of the players listed below won’t be inducted this year and most might not be inducted at all, and this list was determined by a “screening committee” separate from the main group of Hall of Fame voters so there isn’t necessarily any correlation with what Hall voters are thinking. Still, it’s useful to see what players the screening committee members see as potentially induction-worthy, and we can look at their relevant honors and argue over which players are worthy of induction.

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Cantonmetrics: 2025 Preliminary Nominees

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Offseason Snapshot

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. 

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