I spent some time looking back at the history of Zoneblitz the last couple of days, partly just out of curiosity and partly because I haven’t looked at the details in quite some time. Looking back at our domain registrar, it shows our ownership date for Zoneblitz.com as 5/30/2007 — but I know we’ve owned the domain since longer than that, as I remember the very first iteration of the site (a colossal failure) back in probably 2001 or so.

The oldest post in this iteration of Zoneblitz dates back to February 29th, 2008, a leap year post celebrating the start of the new (football) year — a post that, according to our Google Analytics (launched in October of 2008) likely just got it’s first visit in the last 14 years today. We stumbled into writing about the Hall of Fame later in 2008 as well. I thought I had written a much more scathing post about Randall McDaniel not making it, but apparently it was just our first ever predictions post. And while we didn’t think anything of it, come January and the announcement of who made the cut, we saw our first spike in traffic — 5,400 total pageviews, almost 3,600 on that single post. In August, with the actual induction, it spiked again. And it began an annual tradition.

Super Bowl weekend in 2010 saw our biggest spike in traffic ever for the site — over 15,000 visitors to the site in a single month. Unfortunately, with the proliferation of sites actually writing about the Hall of Fame election process,  we’ve never really neared that peak again. In 2011 the spike was just over 10k, and we’ve not crossed that mark again. Fortunately, by then, we already had a loyal group of commenters. Many of you are still here commenting today, and we can’t thank you enough for that.

With the increase in content surrounding the Hall of Fame has come a lot more complexity as they’ve changed the process. The addition of coaches and contributors, the 100th Anniversary Class … you guys are awesome at keeping up with it. Unfortunately Andy and I have been less on top of it in recent years. Special thanks to Paul, who for the last couple of years has been writing most of the Hall of Fame posts (save the occasional player specific post) — and also an apology to him, as I dropped the ball on his first post for the 2023 class. By the time I got it into draft format, the process had moved forward, and I wasn’t sure that a lot of what was written was still accurate. And I wasn’t sure how to revise it.

This isn’t intended to be a goodbye post, or anything like that. While Andy and I haven’t written some of our regular posts this year due to lack of time and honestly lack of audience, we have no intentions of shutting the site down anytime soon, despite the fact that the basically makes almost no revenue. We still enjoy writing about football and still enjoy reading your guy’s comments and occasionally offering our opinions on guys, as uninformed as it may be at times.

So, with all that — let’s look forward to the 2023 Pro Football Hall of Fame Class!

Seniors:

The Seniors category has already been narrowed to its final list, with Chuck Howley, Joe Klecko and Ken Riley being named on August 17th as the three former players that will advance to the final voting in early 2023.  Other finalists considered included Ken Anderson, Maxie Baughan, Randy Gradishar, Cecil Isbell, Bob Kuechenberg, Eddie Meador, Tommy Nobis, Sterling Sharpe and Everson Walls, after being narrowed from a list of 127 players whose careers ended no later than the 1997 season. Gradishar, Kuechenberg and Sharpe made it from the initial cut from 12 to 6 players, and presumably have the edge in being considered for the 2024 class.

Coaches/Contributors:

Former St. Louis Cardinals & San Diego Chargers head coach Don Coryell was selected from a list of 12 finalists to be considered for enshrinement with the Class of 2023. The other 11 finalists included Roone Arledge, Mike Holmgren, Frank “Bucko” Kilroy, Robert Kraft, Art Modell, Buddy Parker, Dan Reeves, Art Rooney Jr., Mike Shanahan, Clark Shaughnessy and John Wooten. There were three reduction votes taken in this category, with Coryell, Holmgren, Kraft and Wooten surviving to the final round, and Kilroy, Parker, Reeves and Shaughnessy being eliminated before that.

My personal take:

As mentioned earlier, I’ve been somewhat out of the loop on the process as it’s changed this year. I remember seeing the announcement that three senior candidates and one coach/contributor candidate would be considered, along with the standard five modern era finalists, but I hadn’t really looked at the lists enough to weigh in.  Pretty sure I’ve always been a fan of separating out the coaches/contributors from the players, as I didn’t like seeing owners (some still active) precluding deserving players from getting their chance … but seeing the finalists, I’m left … a bit underwhelmed?

Coryell’s name has been coming up for years. I understand that he was the architect of an offense that significantly changed the game — and with a 114-89-1 record, he was a solid head coach. But his 3-6 playoff record and zero Super Bowl appearances are legitimate arguments against his credentials. For the players, I can’t speak much to Howley & Riley, as both played before I was born. Even Klecko’s career came before I paid significant attention to more than the Vikings, but from what I remember of him, he always struck me as Hall of Very Good, rather than Hall of Fame.

In the end, I do worry a bit that the expansion of the seniors list, if it continues in this vein for a significant period of time, may somewhat erode the specialness of the class of players enshrined in bronze — especially as the voters seem less and less likely to actually vote no on the final slate of players making it to the last round of voting.

Modern Era Candidates:

The list of Modern Era candidates will be cut to 25 semifinalists next month, before being reduced to 15 finalists in early January. From there the list will be cut to 10, then a final five that will be considered for the Yes/No vote alongside Howley, Klecko, Riley and Coryell.

Current Candidates (bolded players were finalists in 2022; underlined players are first year eligible):

QB: Randall Cunningham, Jake Delhomme, Jeff Garcia, Dave Krieg, Donovan McNabb, Steve McNair.

RB: Shaun Alexander, Mike Alstott (FB), Tiki Barber, Larry Centers (FB), Corey Dillon, Warrick Dunn, Eddie George, Priest Holmes, Steven Jackson, Chris Johnson, Vonta Leach (FB), Jamal Lewis, Lorenzo Neal (FB), Eric Metcalf (also WR/PR/KR), Fred Taylor, Ricky Watters, Brian Westbrook.

WR: Anquan Boldin, Troy Brown (also PR/KR), Donald Driver, Henry Ellard (also PR), Irving Fryar, Devin Hester (also PR/KR), Torry Holt, Joe Horn, Chad Johnson, Andre Johnson, Derrick Mason, Muhsin Muhammad, Andre Rison, Jimmy Smith, Rod Smith, Steve Smith Sr., Hines Ward, Reggie Wayne, Wes Welker, Roddy White.

TE: Dallas Clark, Ben Coates, Wesley Walls.

OL: Willie Anderson (T), Matt Birk (C), Lomas Brown (T), Ruben Brown (G), Jahri Evans (G),  D’Brickashaw Ferguson (T), Kevin Glover (C/G), Jordan Gross (T), Olin Kreutz (C), Nick Mangold (C), Logan Mankins (G), Tom Nalen (C), Nate Newton (G/T), Jeff Saturday (C), Mark Schlereth (G/C), Chris Snee (G), Joe Thomas (T), Brian Waters (G), Richmond Webb (T), Erik Williams (T), Steve Wisniewski (G).

DL: John Abraham (DE, also LB), Jared Allen (DE), Dwight Freeney (DE), La’Roi Glover (DT/NT), Casey Hampton (DT/NT), Robert Mathis (DE), Leslie O’Neal (DE), Simeon Rice (DE), Clyde Simmons (DE/DT), Justin Smith (DE), Neil Smith (DE), Justin Tuck (DE), Vince Wilfork (DT/NT), Kevin Williams (DT/DE).

LB: Jessie Armstead, Cornelius Bennett, NaVorro Bowman, Lance Briggs, Chad Brown, Tedy Bruschi, James Farrior, London Fletcher, James Harrison, Seth Joyner, Willie McGinest (also DE), Takeo Spikes, Pat Swilling (also DE), Zach Thomas, DeMarcus Ware, Patrick Willis, Al Wilson.

DB: Eric Allen (CB), Ronde Barber (CB/S), Dre’ Bly (CB), Kam Chancellor (S), Nick Collins (S), Antonio Cromartie (CB), Merton Hanks (S), Rodney Harrison (S), Albert Lewis (CB), Terry McDaniel (CB), Tim McDonald (S), Darrelle Revis (CB), Allen Rossum (CB), Asante Samuel (CB), Bob Sanders (S), Charles Tillman (CB), Troy Vincent (CB), Adrian Wilson (S), Darren Woodson (S).

ST: Gary Anderson (K), Jason Elam (K), Jeff Feagles (P), Jason Hanson (K), John Kasay, (K), Sean Landeta (P), Shane Lechler (P), Ryan Longwell (K), Pat McAfee (P), Matt Turk (P), Josh Cribbs (KR/PR also WR), Brian Mitchell (KR/PR also RB).

My personal take:

Easy to see the 10 finalists not making the cut last year get in. I’ll update when I am able to finally track down the final five that didn’t make the cut, as I would guess at least four of them have a leg up on making the final five this year. The one first year player I see making the jump into the final five would be Joe Thomas, despite it often not being easy for an OL to make that leap (although easier for LT than for an interior lineman).

Dwight Freeney and Darelle Revis also seem to be logical choices as first year players to make it into the final 15. I am less sure about that final spot, but could see a veteran that is nearing in on the end of the modern era road like Leslie O’Neal making the jump, or possibly someone like Kevin Williams, who has the profile despite being a lesser known player.

For my final five, at least for now, I will go with:

    • Joe Thomas
    • DeMarcus Ware
    • Jared Allen
    • Torry Holt
    • Reggie Wayne

Wayne & Holt can clear the logjam at WR. I suspect that there’s a good chance only one would make it, but both are deserving and have been on the list for a while. Could also see someone like Barber or even Revis making it over Allen or Ware, especially since many may consider them to be similar in position, since Ware mostly was a pass rusher from the LB position. But this would be a slate I would feel pretty solid about, even with my feelings about the Senior/Contributor finalists.

So what say you Zoneblitz Nation?  I know you’ve been naming lists in the previous post, but let’s get official guesses in here for Final 15 (even Final 25 if you want) and the Final 5!

And thanks for sticking with us over the years!