Half an hour ago (ok, the news leaked yesterday), Patrick Willis shocked the football world when he retired after eight years in the league.

As I sit hear watching NFL Network, they are having the same debate that was my first thought–was Patrick Willis a Hall of Famer?

We’ll update this post in a few minutes, but we wanted to start getting comments from our Hall of Fame community, since we think this is amongst the most informed Hall of Fame communities online…

Willis was a starter for the 49ers from Day one after being selected 11th overall in 2007, after a strong performance at the NFL Combine.

He amassed an incredible 174 tackles in his rookie season, along with four sacks. Over his first seven seasons, he only missed six games, and he compiled over 900 tackles and 20.5 sacks. In 2014, he ended his season after six games due to an injury to his toe that required surgery.

In his career, he was named to 7 Pro Bowls, voted first team All-Pro five times (and one second team), led the NFL in tackles twice, was the AP Defensive Rookie of the Year, was a three time NFL Alumni Linebacker of the Year (whatever that is), was twice named the 49ers MVP, and was in the NFL Top 100 as named by NFL Network each year since they started naming the list in 2011.

Our initial take at Zoneblitz (without consulting with the rest of the team) is that, while Willis was a dominant player, his career was just too short–certainly for a first year induction, possibly at all. He will be on the border, but I don’t see Willis as having been a truly “transformative” player in the league’s history, which at basically seven years, I think he would have had to have been to make it.

Time will tell–he’s on the clock for the Class of 2020, if my math is right (which itself is a 50-50 shot)…

Is Patrick Willis a Hall of Famer?

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