Cam Newton

[JameisLoseston]

I support having standards for HOF induction, but I disagree with some points about Aikman. He's not remembered for being the 1st overall pick, but for winning three Super Bowls. Aikman was extremely accurate. The stats say he was #1 or #2 in completion percentage 5 times in a 6 year span. His 69.1% in 1993 was 4th best ever at the time. The eye test supports the numbers. Aikman was a great rhythm passer, and he played in an offense suited to his strength. (Dr. Z called it the real west coast offense.) He had a superb work ethic and developed near perfect timing with Irvin and Novacek (and to a lesser extent, Alvin Harper.) He also turned it on in the postseason, at least in his prime from 1991-1994.
I could listen to arguments against his HOF candidacy, but he would be one of the best players in the HOVG if he was eligible.

Using completion percentage isn't the worst counter, but it's also fallacious in itself, because completion percentage is far more a measure of playing style than actual skill. Aikman was a dink-and-dunker who'd throw downfield if needed, but really preferred not to throw at all, and got outproduced by his RB very often. Him being so conservative was a huge reason why Emmitt Smith has the all time rushing yard and TD records. He was also very brittle for a QB, playing only three 16-game seasons, and having been basically burnt out by 30, at a longevity-supportive position, should also be pretty disqualifying. With that length of career and amount of missed games, he'd have to be Dan Marino good to deserve it. And he wasn't. The obvious comparison is Alex Smith, who had more seasons, higher completion, yards, and touchdowns, and all-importantly, far less picks. After his fifth season, Alex Smith never threw double digit picks again, and got as low as 5 four times. Aikman was single-digits only three times.

As for their playoff performance, Aikman had one truly elite playoffs, 1992. 1993 he was also quite a bit better than normal, but after that he was basically his average self or worse, and in his later years he was pretty feckless. So it kinda evens out, but I'd say he was overall better than average in the playoffs. Now let's compare that to Alex Smith. Alex Smith made the playoffs five times himself, 4 with the Chiefs, and is an example of a player who truly rose to the occasion in those games, with a career 14-2 TD/INT ratio in the playoffs. His teams simply were not always good enough to win around him, but for the style of QB he was there's really nothing more he could have done to help them win those games.

Would I vote for Alex Smith for HOVG? Probably not. Almost certainly not. But if you want to take this as a vote of confidence for Smith, then be my guest. Besides Rodgers, he was the best turnover limiting QB of this century. He has every single measure of skill and value, including playoffs, over Troy Aikman, and otherwise they're basically the same guy. If you support Aikman, you have to support Smith too.

Interesting that you have no comment on Blanda; I guess he was just plain bad. Prolific, but bad. Hard to defend 42 INTs.

[conace21]

Using completion percentage isn't the worst counter, but it's also fallacious in itself, because completion percentage is far more a measure of playing style than actual skill. Aikman was a dink-and-dunker who'd throw downfield if needed, but really preferred not to throw at all, and got outproduced by his RB very often. Him being so conservative was a huge reason why Emmitt Smith has the all time rushing yard and TD records. He was also very brittle for a QB, playing only three 16-game seasons, and having been basically burnt out by 30, at a longevity-supportive position, should also be pretty disqualifying. With that length of career and amount of missed games, he'd have to be Dan Marino good to deserve it. And he wasn't. The obvious comparison is Alex Smith, who had more seasons, higher completion, yards, and touchdowns, and all-importantly, far less picks. After his fifth season, Alex Smith never threw double digit picks again, and got as low as 5 four times. Aikman was single-digits only three times.

As for their playoff performance, Aikman had one truly elite playoffs, 1992. 1993 he was also quite a bit better than normal, but after that he was basically his average self or worse, and in his later years he was pretty feckless. So it kinda evens out, but I'd say he was overall better than average in the playoffs. Now let's compare that to Alex Smith. Alex Smith made the playoffs five times himself, 4 with the Chiefs, and is an example of a player who truly rose to the occasion in those games, with a career 14-2 TD/INT ratio in the playoffs. His teams simply were not always good enough to win around him, but for the style of QB he was there's really nothing more he could have done to help them win those games.

Would I vote for Alex Smith for HOVG? Probably not. Almost certainly not. But if you want to take this as a vote of confidence for Smith, then be my guest. Besides Rodgers, he was the best turnover limiting QB of this century. He has every single measure of skill and value, including playoffs, over Troy Aikman, and otherwise they're basically the same guy. If you support Aikman, you have to support Smith too.

Regarding completion percentage, you missed the part of my post where I said "The eye test supports" the numbers. Aikman's accuracy was due in great part to his overall skill, the fantastic arm that caused Barry Switzer to offer him a scholarship to Oklahoma on the spot, and that made him the #1 overall pick. Emmitt Smith and Moose Johnston did consistently catch 40-50 passes in a season. Aikman would usually dump the ball off instead of scramble or throwing the ball away. But Michael Irvin, no speedster, averaged 15-17 yards per catch. Alvin Harper averaged over 20 on multiple seasons (even though he was only good for 1-2 catches per game.

In the 4 year period of Aikman's peak 1992-1995, Aikman started 11 playoff games. Dallas won 10 of them. His passer rating was over 100 in 9 of those wins, all except the Super Bowl where he played while still suffering the effects of a concussion. Aikman was never going to be a 4,000 yard passer in the regular season (250 yards per game) but he threw for 250 yards or more in 7 of those playoff games. Now 250 yards is not a monster passing game, but it does support my recollection that Aikman did turn it up a level in the playoffs.

And no, I don't have to support Alex Smith for the HOVG if I support Aikman. You provided a number of raw stats for why I should (if I support Aikman.) Stats are meaningless without context, and your failed to provide a pretty significant context; the last decade has been much more conducive to pass efficiency than the 1990's. The more stringent roughing the passer rules are obvious, but even more important are the restrictions against hitting a defenseless receiver. The middle of the field is more open in the passing game than it was 25 years ago. Throwing single digit interceptions in the 1990's was more rare than it is today. Throwing some numbers in PFR, I found 31 QB's in the 90's who threw less than 10 interceptions while throwing 259 passes, playing 13 games, starting 10. In the 9 full seasons of this decade, that has happened 59 times.

Here's context. When my childhood hero QB, Jim Kelly retired in 1996, I believe his passer rating of 84.4 was 4th all time, behind Marino, Montana and Young. Last season, a passer with an 84.4 rating would have been 7th from the bottom, ahead of only three rookie QB's (Rosen, Allen, Darnold) and three players who were not re-signed with their respective teams (Flacco, Bortles, Keenum.)

[JameisLoseston]

I concede the passing efficiency between eras point. I was never really trying to argue differently. I also conceded that Aikman was better in the playoffs, but so was Smith. My argument, rather, was that Smith's output, both regular season and playoffs, was so much better than Aikman's that, after era-adjustments, it is fair to say that they are the same guy. I consider them equals, despite Smith's far better stats because of the era and rules effects you mention. I never said Smith was better, I just said I wouldn't support either of them for HOVG. But he is not worse either. For a QB with a similar short career length to Aikman, title guy Cam Newton is a far better HOVG pick than either due to his running and impact on the game, and we seem to be thinking he won't make it either unless he returns to form.

[sluggermatt15]

I'd find Aikman tough to support for HOVG. A league average game-manager in an era when it's not like they weren't throwing the ball. His RB had more touchdowns than him more years than not, and he wasn't avoiding turnovers like a champ either. If he was drafted in the 5th round instead of 1st overall, with the same career stats, we wouldn't remember him.

George Blanda was a turnover god, totally propped up by Hennigan and Groman in his good years, and his appearance of immense longevity is a bit artificial; he only started about 9 seasons at QB. 9 seasons and is STILL 2nd in career INTs, which is what happens when you average 30 a year. These are the only two HOFers I would not support for HOVG, and not coincidentally, both are quarterbacks.

Bob Waterfield, Bob Griese, Ken Stabler, and even Joe Namath all come off as solidly HOVG to my analysis. All above average guys for their respective eras in their prime, but just, above average.

I'm darn sure Eli Manning, Big Ben, and Rivers will all get in as well, and I'm supporting none of them. Maybe this is just a position I have high standards for, but I feel like I'm holding them to the same standard as every other position. You have to at least have been one of the best in the league at your peak, and none of the guys I've just named were ever that. You might not agree with these picks, but you can't say I don't come prepared with solid arguments.

I won't debate you player for player, but to point out guys from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and try to compare them to players today and say they don't belong in the PF HOF is totally out-of-context. The game has vastly changed over the years. At the time of his retirement, Joe Namath was one of the best QBs to ever play. Blanda was a legend. Waterfield was pretty darn good too, teaming with Norm Van Brocklin in the Rams' two-QB system, which was not uncommon back in the day.

You are comparing apples to oranges and it is unjust.

[Rupert Patrick]

I won't debate you player for player, but to point out guys from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and try to compare them to players today and say they don't belong in the PF HOF is totally out-of-context. The game has vastly changed over the years. At the time of his retirement, Joe Namath was one of the best QBs to ever play. Blanda was a legend. Waterfield was pretty darn good too, teaming with Norm Van Brocklin in the Rams' two-QB system, which was not uncommon back in the day.

You are comparing apples to oranges and it is unjust.

Using standards (such as passing standards) for evaluating who should be in the HOF doesn't work. Using standards to rate players got us the Passer Rating system, and we can see how well that works, where virtually all of the guys on the top 20 list at any point in pro football history are contemporary QB's from that particular point and time.

And for the earlier posts pointing to George Blanda as a poor example of a Hall of Fame QB is silly, as he would not be in the Hall of Fame if he had never kicked a ball in his NFL career. I also think it is pretty likely he would have made the Hall of Fame if he would never have thrown a single pass in his NFL career due to his kicking. The fact he led a couple Oilers teams to AFL Championships and came off the bench for the Raiders a few times in 1970 was the icing on the cake, but I think with his high career point total (1,948 just on field goals and extra points), he would have eventually made the Hall of Fame even if he was strictly a kicker.

[JameisLoseston]

Ooh, good point about the kicking. I don't know why I didn't think it relevant, probably because he wasn't that much better than average. But him being a fairly good QB and kicker at once is indeed a huge resume boost, the kind of thing that makes you a first overall fantasy pick for years on end even if you can't throw. Imagine a QB/K today! Blanda was a turnover god, but he could certainly make up for it, so he wasn't a total loss there. I'm not sure about the argument that he could've made it in as just a kicker, but the one that he wouldn't be as just a QB is more what I was going for originally. I somehow just failed to consider the combination factor, and the fact that he should be in on the combined merits of both is pretty bulletproof. Ignore my claims to the contrary, Blanda is absolutely a HOFer; maybe I just inserted him to vouch for Hennigan, LOL!

Re: comparing past era QBs to QBs now, I don't do that. If I did, I'd support Eli, Ben, and Philip. I compare them to other QBs who played at the same time they did. Was Namath an all-time great when he retired? I do not think he was, statistically.

[Rupert Patrick]

Ooh, good point about the kicking. I don't know why I didn't think it relevant, probably because he wasn't that much better than average. But him being a fairly good QB and kicker at once is indeed a huge resume boost, the kind of thing that makes you a first overall fantasy pick for years on end even if you can't throw. Imagine a QB/K today! Blanda was a turnover god, but he could certainly make up for it, so he wasn't a total loss there. I'm not sure about the argument that he could've made it in as just a kicker, but the one that he wouldn't be as just a QB is more what I was going for originally. I somehow just failed to consider the combination factor, and the fact that he should be in on the combined merits of both is pretty bulletproof. Ignore my claims to the contrary, Blanda is absolutely a HOFer; maybe I just inserted him to vouch for Hennigan, LOL!

Re: comparing past era QBs to QBs now, I don't do that. If I did, I'd support Eli, Ben, and Philip. I compare them to other QBs who played at the same time they did. Was Namath an all-time great when he retired? I do not think he was, statistically.

You can compare passing stats between eras, you just have to adjust for eras.

I didn't mean to say passer rating was terrible, it is good I suppose for evaluating passers from the same season. There is one simple way you can make passer rating pretty effective for evaluating quarterbacks from different eras, and that is by taking the passer rating for each passer for the season in question, and subtracting from it the average passer rating for the season in question, in effect, a net passer rating. What I mean is, if a passer has a rating of 90 and the league average passer rating for that season is 80, his net score is 10. Somebody in the forum came up with that years ago, it might have been Bob Carroll, and it seemed to be the simplest way to adjust for the fact that Passer Rating is constantly increasing due to the slow but steady increase in completion percentage and the slow but steady decrease in interception percentage.

I wrote a paper on a normalized passer rating system that appeared in the Coffin Corner in 2009 or 2010; the top 25 was a nice mix of passers from the past 60 years. I updated it for my upcoming book (the final draft goes to the publisher later this week) and of the top 25 in career normalized passer rating, 15 of the 21 retired QB's are already in the HOF (Peyton Manning and probably Ken Anderson will join them to make it 17) and the four active ones are Brady, Wilson, Brees and Rodgers. The other four retired QB's - Frankie Albert (his stats might have admittedly been a little inflated by the AAFC years), Bert Jones, Tony Romo and Daryle Lamonica. When you have a list of 25 great QB's and the two worst QB's on the list are Frankie Albert and Tony Romo, it isn't a bad list at all, I think.

[JameisLoseston]

Love that Idea. The problem with Albert, Jones, and Lamonica is simply that they burned out young; they'd easily be HOF with longer careers, but hey, that's what HOVG is for. Albert's utter inability to adapt to the NFL is confusing. Romo has a chance, but I'd say HOVG too. I'd be very interested to know who were the biggest snubs in your opinion, and if they were like the first few out. Who surprised you by finishing really low? Lowest HOF (besides Blanda, for aforementioned reasons)? Jack Kemp has to be net negative, right?

[Rupert Patrick]

Love that Idea. The problem with Albert, Jones, and Lamonica is simply that they burned out young; they'd easily be HOF with longer careers, but hey, that's what HOVG is for. Albert's utter inability to adapt to the NFL is confusing. Romo has a chance, but I'd say HOVG too. I'd be very interested to know who were the biggest snubs in your opinion, and if they were like the first few out. Who surprised you by finishing really low? Lowest HOF (besides Blanda, for aforementioned reasons)? Jack Kemp has to be net negative, right?

You'll have to wait until sometime next year I guess. I have no idea what the timetable for publication is, but the book will cover the NFL, AFL and AAFC from 1933 thru 2018. I think it will change the way people look at football, and sports in general.

[Reaser]

Albert's utter inability to adapt to the NFL is confusing.

I don't think it's really "adapting to the NFL", and that goes both ways. There was 7 AAFC teams and 10 NFL teams in 1949, then there was 13 in the combined league in 1950, consolidated talent. Two leagues that were fairly equal but the talent was split and they were not playing against eachother. Then they were in 1950. So not a one way street of "adapting." By nature of 'merging', 1950 would be a tougher league to play in for teams/players from both leagues than the previous 4 years of either was for the AAFC or NFL.

I mean Tommy Thompson fell off a cliff in 1950, do we say it's because he struggled to adapt to the influx of AAFC talent? Tony Canadeo had a 1k rushing season and averaged 5.1ypc in 1949, in 1950 he averaged 2.7ypc and his teammate with the Packers Billy Grimes (who played in the 'lowly' AAFC in 1949) averaged 5.7ypc. Do we say the influx of AAFC talent is why Canadeo wasn't the runner he was before the AAFC teams/players came in? Or do we look at 1949 and say Grimes had 83 carries for 429yds, 5.2ypc, 4 TDs in the AAFC and in 1950 had 84 carries (just one more carry), 480yds, 5.7ypc and 5 TDs and say it was 'easier' to run in the NFL? Elmer Angsman ran for 674yds, 6 TDs and 5.4ypc in the NFL in 1949, AAFC talent comes into the league in 1950 and he 362yds, 1 TD and 3.5ypc. Both Graham's (AAFC to NFL) and Baugh's (NFL with AAFC talent influx) passer ratings went down in 1950. Shoot, Crazy Legs was better in the NFL than he ever was in the AAFC (do we ignore how bad Chicago was and say it's because the AAFC was harder to play in?) And so on. Or was the talent split between two fairly equal leagues and then all of a sudden it was one league and they were playing eachother?

I honestly don't know, considering we're 'researchers', where comments come from like "stats inflated by AAFC years" or comparing the AAFC to the USFL, or that Spec Sanders was only good in the AAFC and somehow it's 'proves' how inferior the AAFC was by him not averaging over 6 ypc in a season in the NFL -- meanwhile, he had 13 ints in his lone season in the NFL and people will still ignore injures and "yeah, but he wasn't running for over 6ypc when 1950 came around" ... Would be like saying Van Buren wasn't as good a runner or Lujack wasn't as good a passer because of the AAFC teams/players that were merged into the NFL in 1950. Asinine.

The AAFC wasn't the XFL taking whoever is not good enough to be in the NFL right now, it wasn't the early years of the AFL, it wasn't the USFL, it was in a totally different era and different time. For some reason people are unaware that WWII happened (pretty major world event) -for one reason the AAFC was able to acquire talent from what would be multiple 'draft classes'- and thus don't understand the affects that had on roster building, available talent and so on for both leagues when the AAFC started.

For clarity, this all isn't in response to JameisLoseton, or anyone specifically, just in general since there's been a lot of comments re: AAFC's level of play/quality in various threads lately and it's extremely odd, to me, how it is viewed by some. As if it was just a league with players who weren't good enough for the NFL and then when they played in the NFL it was proven how inferior the AAFC was because of cherrypicked -and largely irrelevant- stats. And we'll just call the Browns an anomaly, I guess?

For what it's worth, Frankie Albert was in the first Pro Bowl in 1950 (game played in 1951), so was Spec Sanders for that matter. And Billy Grimes, and Otto Graham was MVP and so on. I've watched the game.