What the Hall of Fame Monitor says about the Vikings and football immortality
The build up to the Super Bowl features one of the greatest things in sports: The Knock.
In years past, Pro Football Hall of Fame president C. David Baker would deliver the news to the upcoming class of Hall of Famers. NFL Films began chronicling his experiences knocking on doors to inform finalists that they made it. When Baker retired, fellow Hall of Famers picked up where he left off. This year, for example, Derrick Brooks welcomed Bucs legend Ronde Barber to the Hall and ex-Cowboys and Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson showed up at Zach Thomas’s door.
The Minnesota Vikings have several players who haven’t yet received the knock despite having strong arguments. Jared Allen was a finalist this year, Kevin Williams did not make the cut to become a semifinalist and Jim Marshall was one of 25 senior semifinalists but was not included when the list was pared down to a dozen nominees.
While every fan base will inevitably believe that their favorite player from the past is deserving of football’s highest honor, an invention by the football database Pro-Football Reference shines light on the strength of Williams, Allen and Marshall’s arguments. It also contextualizes whether other past or current players have a good case to get The Knock someday.
The PFR Hall of Fame Monitor is defined as “a metric designed to estimate a player's chances of making the Pro Football Hall of Fame using AV, Pro Bowls, All-Pros, championships, and various stat milestones.”
Some bells and whistles might be going off in the heads of the analytically inclined because Pro Bowls and championships are generally poor measures of which players should be rewarded. However, the history of HOF voting indicates that those things carry weight. PFR’s catch-all AV (Approximate Value) is a measure of a player’s contribution to their offense or defense’s success, which is more telling than Pro Bowl votes.
Combining all factors, the HOF Monitor indicates that Kevin Williams may be suffering from the biggest snub of any eligible player. The only players who rank higher on the Monitor’s all-time list are Bob Lilly, Aaron Donald, Randy White, Alan Page, Joe Greene, John Randle, Warren Sapp and Merlin Olsen.
The strength of Williams’s case rests in his five All-Pro selections, which is tied with Alan Page for fifth most by any defensive tackle. The problem for Williams may be in his sack totals. Despite scoring nearly on par with Randle in terms of Approximate Value, he has less than half the sack total. The most comparable in terms of HOF Monitor score is Seattle’s Cortez Kennedy, who had fewer sacks and fewer All-Pros than Williams.
We have access to numbers now that provide further insight into Williams’s impact compared to his teammates. In particular, how often he was on the field and his all-around game. Take the 2008 season for example. Williams played 910 snaps, second most of any defensive tackle in the NFL and graded by Pro Football Focus as the third best DT in the league behind two players who didn’t clear 700 snaps. He produced an NFL best 59 QB pressures and ranked as the sixth best run stuffer.
PFF began grading in 2006. In the first six years of their grades Williams ranked ninth, fifth, third, 12th, seventh and ninth at his position. What’s interesting about the defensive tackle position is that players with consistency over long periods of time are very, very hard to find. Williams has the 17th most games played at DT and many of the players ahead of him were run-stuffing nose tackles like Ted Washington.
It’s also notable that Williams needs to get in soon or he’s going to get lost in a flood of players who followed in Warren Sapp and John Randle’s footsteps of rushing the passer from the interior. The HOF Moniter lists Aaron Donald, Ndamuking Suh, Fletcher Cox and Geno Atkins as having better cases than Bryant Young, who went in to the Hall last year. Not far behind is Pittsburgh’s Cam Heyward. By the way, Young only made All-Pro once, making it even more strange that Williams hasn’t gotten the nod.
Jared Allen and Jim Marshall’s Hall of Fame Monitor scores leave more room for error than Williams.
Allen’s closest comparable is former Chief and Bronco Neil Smith, who is not in the Hall of Fame. His Approximate Value score is on par with ex-49er Justin Smith, who is not in the Hall of Fame. His sack totals are only slightly above Leslie O’Neal and John Abraham.
At the same time, Allen’s score rates above Charles Haley, his AV is better than Richard Dent, Howie Long and Richard Seymour and he finished only three sacks behind Jason Taylor.
Barreling toward the Hall soon are Julius Peppers, Terrell Suggs and Dwight Freeney, which could put Allen behind the eight ball. There are more on the way like JJ Watt and possibly James Harrison (who rates closely to Allen).
Reaching the final 15 helped Allen’s case significantly. It seems more likely than not the Hall is going to let in a player who ranks 12th all time on the official sack list but pass rushers can be hard to pin down for Canton. Chris Doleman, fifth all-time in sacks, had to wait until 2012. The former Viking DE may be sitting in the que for a bit longer.
Marshall’s HOF Monitor score isn’t compelling but it doesn’t tell the entire story. There are only two HOF’ers with lower numbers, which can be traced to his two Pro Bowl selections in 20 years. One of the troubles that Marshall faced was that he was Pro Bowl worthy on teams that were bad and got zero attention before the peak of the Purple People Eaters’ powers. In 1967 the Vikings won three games but Marshall had eight sacks in 14 games. Two years later he had 14 sacks on one of the greatest defenses in NFL history to lead the team by five over Alan Page.
Ah, yes, Alan Page. He and Carl Eller’s presence also made it very difficult for Marshall to get as much attention.
Pro-Football Reference’s project to credit sacks from the years before it became an official stat gave Marshall the 22nd most in history, just above HOF’er Claude Humphrey. There is, of course, the argument that he simply accumulated stats over 20 years and there’s truth in that statement since he played until age 42. That’s not the same as someone who played until 35 and averaged more sacks per season.
Marshall may end up being one of the best players ever to not make the Hall. While the Monitor agrees with the voters, it’s troublesome that Pro Bowl voting that took place way before the invention of the cell phone could determine whether he gets his due.
What does the Monitor have to say about other Vikings?
— The most comparable quarterbacks to Kirk Cousins is Jeff Garcia and Trent Green
— The only running backs ahead of Adrian Peterson are Payton, Brown, Sanders, Smith, Tomlinson, Simpson and Dickerson
— Randy Moss’s score ranks only behind Jerry Rice
— Harrison Smith would need another All-Pro nod or two in order to have a shot. His comparisons are Adrian Wilson, Malcolm Jenkins and Merton Hanks
— Patrick Peterson is a lock, scoring just ahead of Aeneas Williams and Richard Sherman
So it appears there will be several Vikings who get The Knock in the coming years. Whether the deserving Kevin Williams gets in is to be determined — unless the voters take a peak at the monitor.
