2015 Pro Football Hall of Fame Finalists

I'm going by the first 7 years of careers. Anything after 7 years for a running back is gravy.

Yards from scrimmage:

° 12,859 -- Eric Dickerson
° 11,784 -- Walter Payton
° 10,866 -- Roger Craig
° 10,452 -- Marcus Allen
° 10,416 -- Tony Dorsett

 

Craig was much better than the guys behind him on that list and his prime lasted longer. Anderson was a plugger taking advantage of a dominant offensive line with that Giants team. There were probably 20 backs in the league that year who could have done similar things.

 

Dorsett and Allen's first seven seasons both include the 1982 strike....

And why seven seasons as the cutoff point?

 

Because Craig's days as a dominator dwindled after that.

Actually just went back and saw he posted 1,527 yards in his 8th year. But after that he was hanging on.

As for your first point, it's valid so add a few hundred more yards to each but the point remains that Roger Craig's first 8 years are, by and large, as good as those guys.

The larger point being Roger Craig's as good as any dual threat who ever played. Maybe he's not the 98 percentile Hall of Famer. Maybe he's somewhere in the low 80s, if that makes sense. But I have a hard time believing that his contributions on a dynastic team aren't worthy of getting him enshrined. Pound for pound he's as good as there ever was coming out of the backfield.

 

It does make sense about 80th percentile. Are there worse running backs in the hall? Yes. Are there running backs with less credentials? But is he the best running back not in the hall? Does he have the best credentials? I don't think so. He is likely fifth best running back of the 1980s....third amongst his peers sine Payton and Dorsett were NFL stars when Craig was in high school. Not going to count in guys like WilliamAndrews and Billy Sims because their careers were wrecked by injuries.

 

Put Atwater in just for this devastation.

 

Am I the only one who thinks Warner is a better candidate than Moon? And you don't have to remind me about the CFL.

Also OK with a HOF without Brown.

 

I was very much in the no warner camp when he retired. Snap judgement. Then I went back and looked again. His case is odd, but he compares very favorably to Moon and Fouts except that he was clearly better.

 

No, you are not the only one.

 

The Halls of Fame have devolved into the Halls of the Selectively Very Very Very Good. It's no longer the temple of the immortals, the absolute greatest.
But if you look at who has played in the AFL/NFL over last 50 years and been enshrined in Canton you'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of players that weren't the greatest. Football gets it right more often than baseball lately.

Warner deserves it, his entry won't diminish Canton. It's too late for Cooperstown, that bar has been lowered

 

What are your thoughts on Roger Craig and Steve Atwater? I think we're about the same age so you saw them play.

 

Agree completely