Is Phillip Rivers a Hall of Famer? Do you think he'll make the Hall of Fame and should he make the Hall of Fame?
Is Phillip Rivers a Hall of Famer? Do you think he'll make the Hall of Fame and should he make the Hall of Fame?
Yes I think Rivers will get in the HOF.
Not a hall of fame caliber player. Must really be loosening standards to think otherwise
No way IMO.
But nowadays, anybody with gaudy stats at the QB position gets in.
Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the Hall of Fame was for all-time greats, not everybody who was pretty good.
Rivers is a pretty good QB who hasn't won shit. Not an all-time great career, nor any singular accomplishment that's a defining moment in the history of the game either - the other way that guys on the borderline sometimes can get in.
I just don't see why he should be in there. But he probably will actually get in, since they have been turning it into an all-inclusive showcase for pretty-goods lately.
See you Space Cowboy ...
He's 6th in TDs and 8th in yards and possibly will play 2-4 more years. He will be first ballot HOF. He's not great, but being really good for a really long time is also a Hall worthy accomplishment. By the same token Frank Gore gets in because the productive longevity he's shown at RB is unworldly at that position.
Not this week. This week he’s going to be a 1st round bust.
FF MVP, but no HoF.
All Defense!
Would Eli Manning be a Hall of Fame if he had never even made it to a Super Bowl, let alone won any? Most people would say no, HELL no - yet there he is, one place above Rivers in the career stats.
I don't disagree with you that Rivers will get in, one way or another. But stat inflation in the last 15 years is a JOKE. Anyone who has a decently long career will find himself among the all-time "greats" of the game. I mean, Alex Smith has more passing yards than Troy Aikman or Steve Young. Andy Dalton will probably pass them this season. They have been completely cheapened as any sort of meaningful accomplishment, and I don't think they have almost any bearing on HOF worthiness at all anymore, unless somehow they can figure out a way of making reasonable comparisons.
Rivers does have some other "old school" things going for him, like being the face of a franchise for a long time, and I think being known as a good guy in general, which is why he'd at least be a borderline case by any standard. But wouldn't be a lock.
In a way, this is a great test case for just how "special" it is to be in the HOF anymore ... whether it truly means you're an all-time great player, or they've watered it down to the point of losing impact.
See you Space Cowboy ...
Agreed, he might not have lit the world on fire, but there's a lot to be said about players like Rivers and Gore. Being consistently good for 15+ years is well, GREAT. Considering that most NFL careers don't even last 2 years. What's the difference between Emmitt Smith and Bo Jackson? You could argue that Bo Jackson was way more talented than Emmitt was, but was he an all-time great? NO. Bo was a phenomenal athlete like the game has never seen, but will never be in the HoF because of the lack of body of work. He didn't have a 'great' career, because it was too short. Frank Gore also belongs there, availability and durability on the level of these guys really is impressive. Especially with Gore who's a physical runner that doesn't shy away from contact, and the guy is still doing it.
I don't see it, he may have a lot of stats but he's not clutch. If you don't win SBs then you better be a stand out head and shoulders above your peers. He's very good just not Great.
The guy he replaced is a HoF for the Saints. Ironic that Rivers is more like Archie Manning than Peyton or Eli.
All Defense!
No.
No Super Bowl appearances, never been first team All Pro, led league in passing yardage one time, and led league in passing TDS one time.
https://www.pro-football-reference.c...R/RivePh00.htm
Only Super Bowl era HOF QB without a Super Bowl appearance and no first team All Pro seasons appears to be Warren Moon - Moon led league in passing yardage twice and passing TDS once
https://www.pro-football-reference.c...M/MoonWa00.htm
Given his accomplishments other than those attributed to longevity in a passing era, best argument against keeping Rivers out is if Eli gets in
Ben’s QB class are all getting in. How many times has Ben been all-pro?
I was noting HOF QBs who never played in a Super Bowl - whether it is fair or not multiple rings put a QB in a different category from QBs trying to get inducted solely on individual accomplishments. Same goes for other players - Lynn Swann did not have a HOF career statistically but he played well in multiple Super Bowls on a team that won 4.
The only reason Eli is even being considered for Canton are two games he won in February
Only QB I can recall who started for two Super Bowl winners who is not in is Jim Plunkett
Like Eli Plunkett had a .500 record as a starter.
https://www.pro-football-reference.c...P/PlunJi00.htm
Unlike Eli and Joe Namath (a QB who got in primarily for how he did in a Super Bowl), Plunkett did not play for a New York team
Winning Super Bowls is not a written requirement, but the unwritten code says you get in if you win them and you're also "very good" (e.g., Ben). But being top 5 in all key stats is also an unwritten code. As for Eli, I'd argue that he gets in even without the Super Bowls -- after a few years. His stats will be top echelon. Rivers is definitely getting in without the Super Bowl. I also think it helps playing for one team, unlike guys like Testeverde and Kerry Collins who piled up stats as journeymen.
Rivers, Eli, and Ben will be excellent test cases for whether or not the HOF voters want to re-calibrate their precedents and unwritten policies for the pass-wacky era of the NFL that we are in now.
You basically have three guys that played in the same era representing 3 benchmarks. The guy who won championships but has mediocre stats. The guy who didn't win anything but put up huge numbers. The guy who won a few things and put up really good numbers. How many of those guys do you take?
A strict HOF takes only Ben. A more liberal HOF takes all three.
I would argue passing stats over the past 10-15 years are like home runs in the steroid era of the mid to late 90s or the past few years with the juiced baseball - inflated and something that should be discounted when assessing where a player ranks in terms of comparable career stats
But I guess that is what Matthew Stafford will rely on for his Canton induction although IMO he has never been regarded as one of the best QBs in football
If you project Stafford's stats in an era that has emphasized the pass through what is now his 11th season to what Rivers has accumulated through his 16th season there are a lot of similarities
https://www.pro-football-reference.c...S/StafMa00.htm
https://www.pro-football-reference.c...R/RivePh00.htm
To me Rivers is like Ken Anderson - a very good QB with some excellent stats who had the misfortune to play in the AFC when other teams with talented QBs ruled the AFC - Anderson is not in Canton while Griese, Bradshaw and Stabler are
But FWIW I would agree Rivers is inducted within two or three years of eligibility because of his stats
Not sure where you are coming from with longevity being a criteria to get into the HOF, but IMHO Rivers hasn't done much to separate himself from the pack. He's better than most but nothing spectacular. Has he even won a single post season game? I don't think he has, but I could be wrong. If he somehow manages to win a couple super bowls then we can talk but as things stand right now he isn't anything special. I like the point that Dan made about him being like Kenny Anderson very good but not great. While winning a super bowl is not the end all be all it generally shows that the QB has a way of being clutch in big games, especially when that QB has been in more than 1.
All this being said it is a handful of media types who vote on this stuff so I suppose anything is possible. I just don't think it will happen for him.
I guess it's still TBD how much gaudy passing stats will have lessened weight. Stafford will be a good case study if he plays another 6-7 years. Dan Fouts numbers aren't all that impressive and he won a total of 3 playoff games.
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Is Ben "the guy who won a few things"? He has the same number of championships as the other guy.
If they start letting guys into the HOF purely based on stats, it will quickly turn into a joke.
Barring injury, Matt Ryan is going to become one of the top 10 in career passing yards in the history of the game this year. Matt Ryan! Guys like him, and Stafford, getting in will be the turning point from a tribute to the all-time greats of the game, to a tribute to the new rules of the game.
Like, if stats are the primary qualifier, then from the 2010s on you probably have 8-10 Hall of Fame quarterbacks active at any given time. Like a third of the guys in the league. That's not what the Hall of Fame is for if you ask me.
The baseball comparison is a good one. In the steroid era at least, they mostly figured out who was doing what, and guess what, people didn't look too kindly on the pretty-good players who were suddenly smashing 50-year old records in huge numbers. In football it's ok - it's like they voted to permanently move in the fences by 50 feet and carry on as if nothing happened, so the Sammy Sosas of the NFL just happen to be part of this amazing coincidence where there's a perpetual bumper crop of all-time great players.
Funny thing, there was a guy in baseball who was the all-time best power hitter in the game by a wide margin, almost a statistically impossible margin, and his career kept going for an impossibly long time, and somehow he even kept up this incredible level of performance very late in his career, when it was nearly unheard of for players to avoid a sharp decline, let alone be improving - and he chalked it all up to hard work and dietary supplements and modern sports-medicine based workouts. Even went to his own special sports training center that he touted as his fountain of youth, and he and his followers scoffed at the notion that he got there by anything other than legitimate means; it was just crazy conspiracy theories. But he was always looked at with suspicion because of the way he achieved his milestones, and rumors of cheating followed him for most of his career, and ultimately he was kept out of the Hall of Fame and his records were widely discredited. There was a guy like that in professional cycling too, same exact story. I wonder if there's a guy like that in football?
See you Space Cowboy ...
A couple more games like that turd that Rivers put up on Sunday night and the only way Rivers sees the HOF is if he buys a ticket.
I should clarify that ... they need to come up with some way of accounting for the fact that today's passing stats are a complete joke. It is like they gave a free extra 30-40% to everyone.
I have got a very hard time believing that something like 8 of the top 10 QBs of all time played in the 2010s and 7 of them are active right now (what a coincidence!) but that is exactly what the stats are going to say by the time Rivers is eligible for the HOF.
Maybe Matt Stafford will surprise us all and win a couple championships ... sorry, made myself laugh. But more likely, you will end up with a bunch of guys with the ability of, like - Mark Brunell or Matt Hasselbeck - cosplaying as Hall of Fame candidates.
See you Space Cowboy ...
The number 1 stat for QBs in the HOF is Super Bowl appearances. Without those chances go down severely (not impossible), and you better have stood out at some point in your career. I do not consider him to have ever been clutch. He may have the stats but nothing about him makes me think he is anything special. Some QBs have made it on stats but that was back when passing was not as prolific as it has been during River's era.