In 2020, to celebrate the NFL’s 100th anniversary, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is considering expanding its induction class from eight to 20. Given the number of players who should be inducted — a number that grows every year — one could argue that this move is long overdue.
“It is extremely elite company, and it’s not the Hall of very, very good. It’s the Hall of Fame, and so it should be difficult to make it,” Hall of Fame president David Baker recently said. “But there’s a lot of guys through the years (who deserve to be honored but have not). We have several guys who are on all-decade teams who aren’t in the Hall of Fame. And, so, this is an opportunity with the centennial coming up.”
The Hall of Fame board will vote on the one-year expansion in early August. Baker said that the ideal expanded list would include five modern-era players, 10 players from the Senior Committee, three contributors and two coaches. The Senior Committee nominees are players whose active careers have been completed for at least 25 seasons, and there are a lot of deserving candidates who are overlooked every year.
If the list is expanded, and it should be, here’s one list of eight Senior Committee nominees who should be on it, and two coaches whose contributions to the game can’t be denied.
10. LB Chuck Howley
Chicago Bears, 1958-1959
Dallas Cowboys, 1961-1973
Known primarily as the only player from a losing team to be named Super Bowl MVP (Super Bowl V), Howley was much more than that to the Cowboys in a long and distinguished career. Selected by the Bears seventh overall in the 1958 draft, Howley suffered what was thought to be a career-ending knee injury in the 1959 preseason. He didn’t play at all in 1960, but Tom Landry traded for him in time for the 1961 campaign, and it was the perfect spot for Howley, who played 176 games for Dallas. He made six Pro Bowls and five first-team All-Pro lists, and amassed 29 interceptions and 20 fumble recoveries through his career. He was a highly intelligent player who presaged the modern coverage linebacker.
9. WR Harold Jackson
Los Angeles Rams, 1968
Philadelphia Eagles, 1969-1972
Los Angeles Rams, 1973-1977
New England Patriots, 1978-1981
Minnesota Vikings, 1982
Seattle Seahawks, 1983
Who was the most productive receiver of the 1970s? If I told you that one player led the NFL in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns in the decade, and the headline wasn’t a dead giveaway, you might go a long time without mentioning Jackson — but with 432 catches for 7,724 yards and 61 touchdowns, Jackson does indeed hold the Triple Crown for the decade. For the Eagles, Jackson led the NFL in receiving yards in 1969 (1,116 yards) and 1972 (1,048 yards), back when the season was 14 games long, the passing game was relatively rudimentary and a 1,000-yard season was far more of an accomplishment than it is today. In 1973, his first season back with the Rams, Jackson led the league in touchdowns with 13. If you project his talents into the modern NFL, with its expanded season and far more explosive passing game, Jackson would have a far more compelling case.
8. DE Richard ‘Tombstone’ Jackson
Oakland Raiders, 1966
Denver Broncos, 1967-1971
Denver Broncos and Cleveland Browns, 1972
If you ask people who were watching pro football from 1966 through 1972, they’ll tell you that Jackson was among the best defensive ends the game has seen. At 6 feet 3 and 255 pounds, Jackson had a game not unlike what Deacon Jones put on the field — he could beat you with speed to either side, a pure bull-rush or what was called the “halo spinner” at the time — the head slap. He could crack an opponent’s helmet with that. Jackson’s career was cut short by injuries, and his unofficial sack total of 43 doesn’t move the needle in an era where guys like Gerry Philbin were putting up 20 sacks in a season in the late 1960s, but Jackson was somebody you had to see to believe.
7. WR Cliff Branch
Oakland Raiders, 1972-1981
Los Angeles Raiders, 1982-1985
The pre-eminent deep receiver of his era, Branch became the ultimate personification of Al Davis’ bombs-away vertical attack philosophy. Through his 14-year career, only Charlie Joiner, Steve Largent, Harold Carmichael and Ozzie Newsome had more catches than Branch’s 501. Only Joiner, Largent, James Lofton and Carmichael had more yards than his 8,685. Only Carmichael and Largent had more touchdowns than his 67, and no receiver with more than 500 catches had more yards per reception than Branch’s 17.34. Yes, Carmichael should also be in the Hall of Fame — he’s the only other receiver named here who isn’t — but Branch is even more deserving.
QB Ken Anderson
Cincinnati Bengals, 1971-1984
Before Bill Walsh had Joe Montana and Steve Young as the perfect distillations of his offensive philosophies, he had Anderson. Walsh was the Bengals’ offensive coordinator from 1968 through 1975, and under Walsh, Anderson transformed from a third-round pick out of Augustana to a player who led the NFL in completion percentage three times, passing yards two times, yards per attempt twice and passer rating four times. He’s been overlooked for years for a number of reasons — he was unable to win a Super Bowl, and he was seen by some as a tool of Walsh and Paul Brown more than his own quarterback — but he was also one of the first modernly efficient quarterbacks, playing in an era where guys who played 15 to 20 seasons ended their careers with unworkable completion percentages and more interceptions than touchdowns.
CB Ken Riley
Cincinnati Bengals, 1969-1983
Paul Krause, Emlen Tunnell, Rod Woodson and Dick “Night Train” Lane are the four career leaders in interceptions, and all four men are in the Hall of Fame. Riley, tied for fifth all-time with Charles Woodson at 65 picks, is not. Woodson will certainly get in. Ty Law, who’s in the Class of 2019, had 59 career interceptions. Deion Sanders, also in the Hall of Fame and considered by some to be the greatest cover cornerback ever, had 53. Riley was targeted more often in his career than Sanders was, but it strains credulity that Riley isn’t discussed more often as one of the NFL’s best all-time cornerbacks, and a Hall of Fame candidate. Add in his three postseason picks and Riley’s omission becomes even more curious.
LB Randy Gradishar
Denver Broncos, 1974-1983
It was Gradishar’s misfortune to play in an era when Dick Butkus, Jack Lambert and Jack Ham were the primary names among NFL linebackers, and it further obscured Gradishar’s greatness that he played in one of the NFL’s first base 3-4 defenses. Playing in Denver, which was a secondary media market until John Elway showed up, didn’t help either. But when Gradishar retired after the 1983 season, he unofficially had the most career tackles in NFL history with 2,046, he had 26 interceptions (including the postseason), and he had 20 sacks according to Broncos team records — an impressive number for an inside linebacker in an era when defensive players tended to stay in their lanes quite often. Gradishar has been a Hall of Fame semifinalist and finalist on several occasions, and most analysts consider his continued omission to be among the most egregious.
3. DE Jim Marshall
Cleveland Browns, 1960
Minnesota Vikings, 1961-1979
Few legacy players are more negatively affected by the fact that the NFL didn’t keep the quarterback sack as an official statistic until 1982 than Marshall, who’s known more for running a fumble recovery the wrong way against the 49ers in 1964 than he is for an amazing career in which he played 19 seasons for the Vikings and never missed a game. Marshall’s unofficial sack total of 127 would put him 17th all time, ahead of Hall of Famers Derrick Thomas and Charles Haley. Marshall was also an outstanding run defender and one of the prominent members of Minnesota’s dominant “Purple People Eaters” front four, along with Alan Page and Carl Eller, both of whom have been in the Hall for years. Marshall should have been inducted at a similar clip.
2. HC Don Coryell
St. Louis Cardinals, 1973-1977
San Diego Chargers, 1978-1986
As much as any other offensive mind, Coryell saw his concepts rule the modern league. Coryell created offshoots of Sid Gillman’s ideas and made them his own in a three-digit system opposing defenses found nearly impossible to stop. But in St. Louis and San Diego, he was waylaid by owners more interested in the bottom line than in building a Super Bowl contender. Still, after a triumphant career as San Diego State, Coryell turned the moribund Cardinals into a top-10 offense and did even more with the Chargers, who led the NFL in passing every season from 1978 through 1983 — a six-year run unrivaled in NFL history. Coryell also created the modern “move” tight end with Kellen Winslow. He passed away in 2010 without a well-deserved Hall of Fame nod, and every year that the NFL fails to bring him into that group is an embarrassment.
1. HC/Adviser Clark Shaughnessy
Head Coach: Los Angeles Rams, 1948-1949
Adviser: Chicago Bears, Washington Redskins
You may not know his name, but Shaughnessy is as compelling an innovator as there’s been in NFL history, and his reach is as historic as we’ve seen. George Halas hired Shaughnessy as an adviser in the mid-1930s, and it was Shaughnessy’s advancements of the T-Formation that allowed the Bears to dominant the league in the late ’30s and early ’40s. Signed by the Los Angeles Rams in 1949 to play a similar role for head coach Bob Snyder, Shaughnessy so impressed owner Dan Reeves that he made Shaughnessy the head coach instead. Shaughnessy moved halfback Elroy Hirsch to receiver and created the three-receiver set. And with that, the “Point-a-Minute Rams” — a dynamic offense decades ahead of its time — was born. He returned to the Bears after two seasons with the Rams, and set out to foil the shotgun formation, put in place by 49ers head coach Red Hickey, in the early 1960s. Shaughnessy brought back the old middle guard position and did just that. As a result, the shotgun was mostly shot down in the NFL for the next 30 years.
A tireless innovator, Shaughnessy deserves a bust in Canton more than anybody else who doesn’t have one.
