HOF prelim, 167 names

[Brian wolf]

Good points ... but lets say half of his forced fumbles were recovered by the defense, thats still 60 forced turnovers. Riley and Lebeau werent near 9 TDs on defense as well. His tackle numbers were better than I thought, and unlike Riley and LeBeau, who played when defenses had more leverage, Tillman took on a larger number of skilled receivers.

[Hail Casares]

Good points ... but lets say half of his forced fumbles were recovered by the defense, thats still 60 forced turnovers. Riley and Lebeau werent near 9 TDs on defense as well. His tackle numbers were better than I thought, and unlike Riley and LeBeau, who played when defenses had more leverage, Tillman took on a larger number of skilled receivers.

IIRC, only 12 resulted in turnovers. It was nowhere near half. So Tillman accounted for something like 50 career turnovers/takeaways. Fellow Bear DB Walt Harris is credited with 47 career takeaways.

Also, if we are making a HOF argument for a guy on the back of the turnovers/takeaways he produced..we need to have the actual number and not assume that 50% of his FF's were recovered by his teammates/himself.

The Riley/LeBeau comps start to fall flat when you take into consideration the era each played in as well.

[JohnTurney]

but lets say half of his forced fumbles were recovered by the defense, thats still 60 forced turnovers.

FF = 44

INTs = 38
FR = 7 on plays that fumble caused by someone else
FR = 25 on plays he forced fumble recovered by Bears, 4 of which was Tillman

70 turnovers total


Note: in double-checking the article -- https://www.charlestillman.org/page/page.aspx?ID=1052 I cam up with one less
24 rather than 25, so my total is 69.

But stathead may have missed one or I missed one... not going to take time to find the missing one --

No dog in the fight about Tillman but on responding to your point...
55-57% recovered by Bears
about 25% recovered by other teams
maybe 16-18 percent went out of bounds

Someone who wants Tillman to get to Hall of Fame could do a study. The article i linked to
has a lot more of a breakdown.

[ChrisBabcock]

Comparing him to Lebeau and Riley is off base. Both of those guys had over 60 career INT's. Tillman had less than 40.

Adjust this for era though and the numbers are very comparable.

[rewing84]

Heres my Modern Semi List

Eric Allen

Jared Allen

Willie Anderson

Tiki Barber

Anquan Boldin

Jahri Evans

Antonio Gates

Eddie George

London Fletcher

Rodney Harrison

Torry Holt

Luke Kuechly

Eli Manning

Steve Smith SR

Joe Staley

Terrell Suggs

Earl Thomas

Adam Vinatieri

Hines Ward

Ricky Watters

Richmond Webb

Kevin Williams

Steve Wisniewski

Darren Woodson

Marshall Yanda