How Pro Football Hall of Fame-worthy receivers could catch a break

Although many of them receive adulation and glory, wide receivers can have a rough go of it with Hall of Fame voters. Of wideouts who have debuted in the NFL since 1969, only Jerry Rice, Steve Largent and Randy Moss have been inducted on the first ballot.

With passing stats becoming more gaudy as the years go by, and changes to the sport’s safety rules dictating softer coverage, it becomes harder to gauge which receivers are worthy of enshrinement, even as their numbers often dwarf those of greats from the past. As a result, a number of star receivers are waiting in the wings and may end up getting skipped over. Voters have spoken of a logjam at the position in recent years, and there’s an opportunity next year to do something about it --- if the Hall and voters are willing.

Earlier this month, Pro Football Hall of Fame president David Baker said a proposal that would allow 20 inductees for the 2020 class has received tentative approval, more than doubling the current maximum size of eight. The Hall of Fame, which will induct the Class of 2019 on Saturday, wants to do it big for its centennial class, celebrating the league’s 100th anniversary.

No receivers are among the 2019 class, after the Hall induction in 2018 of Moss and Terrell Owens, who had suffered an overly long wait for trivial reasons. Those two are unquestioned generational talents, but their induction obscured players who are worthy but might now fall through the cracks. Saying they’re the only worthy ones is like saying Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are the only worthy HOF quarterbacks from this era. Brett Favre and Kurt Warner are the most recent QBs to go in. With the recent precedent of Warner, it’ll be hard to say no to Brady, both Manning brothers, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Aaron Rodgers and Philip Rivers. The Hall of Fame may very well be looking at a QB logjam in a decade. 

As it stands, receivers Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce and Hines Ward are waiting in the wings. Next year, Reggie Wayne enters the mix, and Calvin Johnson is eligible for induction the year after. Wayne, like Holt, Bruce and Ward, is a Super Bowl champion with multiple Pro Bowl nods and more than 10,000 yards receiving. Megatron is, well, Megatron. His retired early and played exclusively for the lackluster Lions, but he was so phenomenally talented and transcendent that he will be strongly considered anyway.  This is likely to continue building through the years unless voters unclog the mass of worthy players waiting in the wings.

The problem is, while the Hall of teasing a large class next year, it seems the point of it is to address oversights of the distant past, rather than ones that might be occurring now.

In that same interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio, Baker clarified that the structure of the 2020 superclass would mostly be players from before the modern age. “We have several guys who are on all-decade teams who aren’t in the Hall of Fame, so this is an opportunity with the Centennial coming up,” he said. “This year we have eight, so this would be quite a few guys, but it would be the five normal modern-era players elected from 15 finalists and then 10 seniors, three contributors and two [coaches].” 

So the incoming class of modern players would essentially be the same as normal, with five slots, though realistically really only four of them are available since Troy Polamalu will be eligible, and the Steelers safety is considered the most shoe-in of the newcomers.

Although it’s good to address mistakes from long ago, the Hall should take the opportunity to alleviate a current mess. Technically, Holt is a member of the 2000s all-decade team, so possibly it could make an exception for him as a senior member. Unless it does, it seems unlikely that the logjam will get fixed. 

With four slots aside from the presumptive Polamalu induction, it’s unlikely that Hall voters would use all four slots to admit Wayne, Holt, Bruce and Ward. Even though it would clear the deck at that position, voters would likely fear the perception that they were favoring one positional group too strongly over some others. So it would likely be more useful to expand next year’s modern-day class to eight or 10, and have the remainder dedicated to figures from prior eras. 

That way, Hall voters can unclog the wait at receiver and still have a class that is represented widely among position groups. The emphasis would still be one of historical import, but the effect would do as much to fix current problems with the process rather than ones that have been stewing for decades.