Fear factor helps define Pro Football Hall of Famers
04:17 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Fellow Hall of Famer Lem Barney said Bob Hayes struck "midnight fear" in the hearts of NFL defensive backs because of his speed.
That's my definition of a Hall of Famer - someone who instills fear in an opponent. I want players in Canton who are difference makers. The Hall of Fame should be about impact - and few wide receivers in the game's history had the impact of a Bob Hayes.
Early Saturday morning last weekend, before the Hall of Fame opened, I walked through the enshrinement room and sought out the busts of the wide receivers: Berry, Irvin, Largent, Monk, Swann ... I started to rank them mentally. Where would Bob Hayes fit in this group? Where would Michael Irvin fit? Where would they all fit?
The first thing I look for in a receiver isn't his number of receptions. The quality of his receptions is more important to me than the quantity. Yards per catch. That's where it all starts for me at wideout. I want a guy who makes plays down the field. Preferably deep down the field. I also want players who find the end zone. I don't want first downs - I want touchdowns.
That's why Paul Warfield sits atop the list in my ranking of the Hall of Fame's 16 modern-era wide receivers. He averaged 20.05 yards per reception and deposited one out of every five catches in the end zone. The quality of his catches far exceeded the quantity (427).
Warfield played 13 seasons with two franchises, Cleveland and Miami. His teams won nine division titles and three NFL championships. He lined up to play 214 games in his career and his teams won 152 of them. That's a winning percentage of 66.6 percent.
Warfield averaged better than 20 yards per catch for seven consecutive seasons (1966-72) and went to eight career Pro Bowls. This while playing for two franchises that primarily ran the football.
Warfield was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Only three other wideouts in history were first-ballot selections: Lance Alworth, Steve Largent and Raymond Berry. Logically, they rank 2 through 4 in my ranking of the Hall of Fame wideouts.
Here's my complete list. This is how I'd select them if we were on the playground having a pickup football game. After each, I list the number of catches, number of touchdowns, yards per catch (YperC) and touchdowns per catch (TDperC). Remember, quality over quantity. So let the debate begin:
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I visited the Bills, Steelers and Browns last week, and I'm back on the road this week to see the Giants, Eagles, Ravens and Redskins. On paper, the Steelers are a better team than their Super Bowl championship squad of 2008. They're the best team I've seen thus far and I'm anxious to stack them up against the Giants and Eagles.
Now let's take a spin around the league:
Travel log: One of the perks of my job is the chance to see the country. NFL games take me to the big cities on a weekly basis in the fall, but training camp allows me the chance to explore the smaller towns in the summer.
During my visit to Steelers camp last week in Latrobe, Pa., I broke away between the morning and afternoon practices for a 30-minute drive to Johnstown, where the movie Slap Shot was filmed. Paul Newman said it was one of his all-time favorite flicks, and it's also one of mine. I was with a couple guys who knew all the lines from the movie and they gave me the Slap Shot tour, showing me the downtown square, the parade route, the statue of "The Dog That Saved Johnstown," the bar, the beauty salon, the steel mill ... Then Bill Bredin, the current general manager of the Johnstown Chiefs, gave us a personal tour of the old War Memorial. I visited the lockerroom where the Hanson Brothers "put on the foil." I saw the organ loft and Joe McGrath's office at the top of the building. That 40 minutes I spent in Johnstown will likely be the highlight of my summer camp tour.
Book review: War as They Knew It, by Michael Rosenberg . A documentation of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry during the Bo Schembechler-Woody Hayes years. Rosenberg does a terrific job portraying the two Big Ten coaches, particularly Hayes, who was the more complex of the two. Hayes would quote General George S. Patton one day and Ralph Waldo Emerson the next. Like Bobby Knight, there was so much to admire about the man and his principles, but his public persona was damaged by a few high-profile outbursts.
Schembechler was an assistant at Ohio State under Hayes, who treated him like a son. But when Schembechler left Miami (Ohio) to take the job at Michigan, Hayes stopped talking to him. Hayes never used the school name, always referring to Michigan as "That School Up North."
But the book is more than a tale of two coaches. Rosenberg incorporates a history lesson, explaining how politics and the Vietnam War in the 1970s impacted the college towns of Ann Arbor and Columbus ... and how they impacted Hayes and Schembechler.
The book has some great anecdotes about Hayes and his relationship to Richard M. Nixon, and also about Mike Lantry, a Vietnam veteran who returned to be a placekicker for Michigan. It's a great book to read to get into the mood for a college football season.
Ring tones: The Steelers became the first team to win six Lombardi Trophies and with that championship came the largest Super Bowl ring to date. It's face is the size of a hubcap. But it's still a single ring.
I'm waiting for a championship team to create a brass-knuckle ring - a ring that has two finger holes because the face won't have enough space for all the diamonds. Maybe when Pittsburgh wins its seventh ... or if the Cowboys ever win their sixth. A word to the wise – never shake hands with someone wearing a Super Bowl ring. It's darn near a weapon. Your hand will throb for three hours afterward.
There's no 'O' in Cleveland: On Nov. 17, 2008, in the fourth quarter of a game between Buffalo and Cleveland, Jerome Harrison bolted 72 yards for a touchdown - the longest run of the season by the Browns. It was also the final offensive touchdown of the season for the Browns in just their 10th game of the season.
Houston, Indianapolis, Tennessee, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh all kept the Cleveland offense out of the end zone the rest of the way. The Browns were shut out in each of their last two games by the Bengals and Steelers.
Cleveland's only touchdown in its final six games of the season came on a 24-yard interception return by Brandon McDonald against Philadelphia. The Browns played their final four games of the season with their Nos. 3-4 quarterbacks after injuries to Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson.
Canton callings: For the first time in Pro Football Hall of Fame history, back-to-back classes were enshrined with more defensive players than offensive. Defenders outnumbered offenders, 4-2, in the Class of 2008 and, 3-2, in the Class of 2009. But that did little to close the gap in Canton between offense and defense.
Of the 175 modern-era enshrinees in Canton, 110 played offense and only 65 played defense. That gives offense 63 percent of the Hall of Fame population – and they say defense wins championships. With Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith already penciled in for the Class of 2010, don't expect defense to close the gap any time soon.
The position least represented is safety, with only seven enshrinees. There hasn't been a pure safety inducted since Ken Houston, who last played in 1980. It's hard to believe almost 30 years have passed and the committee has not found a single safety worthy of enshrinement. Nine quarterbacks have been inducted since then, nine running backs and seven offensive tackles - but no safeties. None of the four pure safeties on the 1980s all-decade team - Joey Browner, Deron Cherry, Nolan Cromwell and Kenny Easley - has even reached the finals to be discussed yet.
(P.S.: Hold off on the e-mails, Minnesota fans. Paul Krause was inducted in 1998, but he retired before Houston. His last season was 1979.)
Idle talk?: So Michael Crabtree is threatening to sit out the season because he can't come to contract terms with the San Francisco 49ers. I believe the last time a first-round pick actually sat a season in a contract dispute was Colorado State quarterback Kelly Stouffer, who wouldn't sign with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1987.
Crabtree, the 10th pick in the 2009 draft, wants a contract that financially exceeds that of Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick by Oakland. Crabtree, the two-time Biletnikoff Award-winner, believes he's a better player than Heyward-Bey and wants to be paid accordingly despite his lower draft standing.
That was the crux of Emmitt Smith's rookie holdout in 1990. He believed he was a better player than Blair Thomas, who went second overall in the 1990 draft to the New York Jets. Emmitt went 17th to the Cowboys. Turns out Emmitt was right - he was a better player than Thomas, much better. But Smith wound up missing all of training camp and eventually signed with the Cowboys for less than Thomas.
That holdout cost Smith a 1,000-yard rookie season. He didn't start the first two games as he was getting up to speed with the offense, and he wound up rushing for only 937 yards. It was the only season in his first 12 that Smith did not rush for 1,000.
After sitting out the 1987 season, Stouffer was traded by the Cardinals to the Seattle Seahawks that winter. He wound up playing five NFL seasons for the Seahawks but started only eight games and threw just 437 career passes.
• Rod Woodson played for four teams in his NFL career. He also has five kids. At his Hall of Fame induction last weekend, each of his five kids wore a different team jersey representing the stops in his football career. The kids wore jerseys of the Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, Baltimore Ravens, Oakland Raiders and Purdue, his alma mater. Nice touch.
• In my summer tour of training camps, my job is to ask questions. I interview players, coaches and front-office types for stories and notes. But those same people have been asking me a question as well: "How's Jerry's new stadium?" I tell them it's over the top, even by Jerry's standards.
• The NFL is allowing the original AFL teams to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their league by wearing throwback uniforms for a handful of "legacy" games against each other. You saw the Bills and Titans dressed in 1960-era garb last weekend in the Hall of Fame game. Also, the Cowboys and Chiefs will wear throwbacks in their Oct. 11 game in Kansas City. The Chiefs will be wearing their Dallas Texans uniforms that day. The Chiefs left Dallas in 1963 after winning the AFL championship. If I was commissioner, I'd decree that the AFL teams be allowed to wear their 1960 uniforms all season.
I'm surprised the New England Patriots haven't signed RB Edgerrin James yet. It seems the Patriots have signed every other unemployed Pro Bowler this offseason. Bill Belichick is another advocate of quality over quantity.
Rick Gosselin shares his NFL analysis Wednesdays through Fridays on the NFL blog.
Rick Gosselin is the author of GoodFellows, the story of Detroit's surprisingly successful St. Ambrose football teams of the '50s and '60s.