by Andy | Jul 28, 2009 | Hall of Fame, NFL News
There are 21 coaches in the NFL Hall of Fame, all of whom were head coaches at some point in their careers.
There aren’t any who were known for their time as an assistant. But one could make a pretty strong argument that Philadelphia Eagles Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson should be the first.
Johnson, who took a leave of absence from the team in May to fight a cancerous tumor on his spine, died, the team announced Tuesday. The 68-year-old coach designed an attacking defense that helped lead the Eagles to five NFC Championship games and a Super Bowl. They were generally among the league’s top defenses and he was considered among the top defensive minds in the league’s history.
According to ESPN, his 10-year tenure produced 26 Pro Bowl players and 390 sacks, good for second in the league during that time period. He was a master architect of blitzes and was revolutionary in his ability to keep offenses off balance. He never became a head coach in the NFL, but his proteges, John Harbaugh and Steve Spagnuolo, have head jobs right now.
The accolades for Johnson are pouring in from around the league at NFL.com and other locations.
(more…)
by Andy | Jul 22, 2009 | Hall of Fame, NFL Random Thoughts
We’ve hinted at it a couple times in previous posts, but we’re now making it official. Zoneblitz.com will be heading to Canton, Ohio for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in early August.
We’re making a week-long road trip out of the trip. Check brushbackpitch.com for a more detailed accounting of where we’ll be headed, as much of the trip will be dedicated to baseball-related activities as well.
But on the football front, we’re planning on arriving in Cleveland on the morning of Friday, August 7 with hopes and plans of touring Cleveland Browns Stadium. We wandered around the outside of the stadium while visiting the city of Cleveland during a previous road-trip. From the outside it’s an impressive looking venue, but we weren’t there during a time when tours were available. So we’re excited about that opportunity.
On Saturday, we’re planning on getting to the Hall of Fame early – it’ll be my third time there and my brother’s second time.
We’ll be arriving to see the opening of the new, $2.4 million Lamar Hunt Super Bowl Gallery. After the ceremony it’s off to Pittsburgh for the rest of the trip, the focus of which will switch largely from football to baseball.
During this week-long trip, we’ll be doing some brainstorming on possible additions and/or changes to Zoneblitz.com. We’re also building in at least short chunks of time throughout the trip to fit in some other sites and sounds of the U.S. If anyone has thoughts and suggestions on either what we should look for during the trip or on what we could do to improve the blog, please feel free to leave us a comment.
Who knows? If this goes well, maybe we’ll make this an annual thing.
Thanks for reading.
by Tony | Jul 8, 2009 | Hall of Fame
Well, Tony P. already asked for it–and to be honest, I thought about putting it up, but my thoughts on the matter are fairly straight forward, and I wasn’t sure it was worth the post.
Plus, it’s come up before, here and here (and before we go all cynical on Tony P. for saying yes in one place, no in another, I believe the no is in reference to him being a first year guy).
But now ProFootballTalk.com has posted the question, and since we do seem to talk a lot about the Hall of Fame here, I figured we better do it here too–especially since frankly I think we’ve got a better group of Hall of Fame minds discussing Hall of Fame matters.
So the question is–is Steve McNair worthy of the Pro Footabll Hall of Fame?
If my math is right, he’ll be eligible in 2013–the same year as Michael Strahan, Warren Sapp, Jonathon Ogden, Larry Allen and more.
McNair’s stats include 31,300 yards, 174 TDs vs. 119 Ints, 82.8 career rating, 60.1% completion percentage, and 37 rushing TDs. He appeared in one Super Bowl, was a 3-time Pro Bowler, was not ever a 1st team All-Pro, and won one co-MVP in 2003.
Non-tangibles that may come into play, whether they should or not, would be his reputation as a gritty player who would play through pain, although he also did miss a lot of games (at least 28 after becoming the full time starter, by my count), the fact that he was the first highly drafted black QB from a smaller, traditionally black school, who had a team built around him (there were teams that had been built around black QBs before [Warren Moon], and black QBs drafted in the first round [Doug Williams], but none that were drafted as high as #3).
Information forthcoming around the circumstances of his murder could also be on the minds of some voters. Like I said, these are non-tangibles that probably shouldn’t be considered, but the voters, although members of the media, are also (mostly) human.
So what say you, OUR voting members? Leave your rationale in the comments below…
by Andy | Jun 3, 2009 | Hall of Fame, NFL News
Rodney Harrison is scheduled to make an announcement on his football future this afternoon, but the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and Dan Patrick, on his Wednesday morning radio show, broke the news early.
The former Charger and Patriot safety will hang up his helmet and shoulder pads and join NBC’s Football Night in America.
I really like the move from a sports media standpoint. For a sport already short on good announcers that is already losing John Madden this season, Harrison can become one of the next generation of analysts. He’s well spoken, he’s a good analyst and I recall him bringing some humor along with his insights. This should be a very good move for him.
As a player he was a huge hitter, possibly the most intimidating safety of his era. He attempted to play one Super Bowl with a broken arm and yes, he was also injury prone through stretches of his career. He missed the last 10 games of his career with a thigh injury suffered last season.
He also had a reputation for being a dirty player and he was suspended at one point for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy, after which he admitted to taking human growth hormone to help him recover from injury.
On the Patrick show this morning, he acknowledged the mistake and that he knew what he was doing was wrong. “I put football in front of my family and in front of my life,” he said.
So there’s the long and short of Harrison. That makes Harrison a Hall of Fame candidate starting in 2014. Does he make it?
by Andy | Feb 11, 2009 | Hall of Fame, NFL News, NFL Random Thoughts
Could it be?
For the second offseason in a row, good ol’ number four is retiring.
Brett Favre has instructed his agent to tell the New York Jets he has decided to retire, according to ESPN.
Last year Zoneblitz predicted that Favre’s retirement would be short-lived. I had a hunch the guy would be back for at least one more last minute comeback win over my hometown Vikings.
I’m not 100 percent convinced he’s done for good this time, but I’m leaning toward believing it. Favre looked pretty rough the last quarter of the 2008 season. He can still fling the pig but with increasing frequency it ends up falling to the ground or fluttering into the hands of defensive players.
He’s not the same player in the cold either.
Nonetheless, if he does retire it’ll close the book on an interesting and at times amazing career. And when Tony gets around to writing the 2014 Hall of Fame post Favre’s name will definitely be on the list.
by Tony | Feb 10, 2009 | Hall of Fame
Our 2009 Pro Football Hall of Fame Inductees post had a lot of discussion around it, so we figured we’d better come back and take a chance at 2010.
First, taking a look back at 2009, we only hit 3 of the 5 non-senior inductees–Randall McDaniel, Derrick Thomas and first time eligible Bruce Smith. Also making it were first timer Rod Woodson, who we debated about including, and figured would make it in a year or two, and Bills owner Ralph Wilson, who snuck in despite not even being a finalist in 2007 or 2008, and seemed like a bit of stretch to me, given the recent way he’s treated the people of Buffalo with his team (the whole Toronto thing).
Regardless, here’s looking ahead to 2010:
(more…)
Loading ...
Robert simple we need the website up to date but you’re right I do obsess over frivolous things but I…
im just wondering andy why are we obessing over friviolous things like websites
Yea it’s a mess and another example of how poor their PR and marketing often is
In addition to the process the Pro Football Hall of Fame has to fix how they run their website because…
I just started a Facebook group called Clint Murchison for Pro Football Hall of Fame