NFL: If Eli Manning retired today, would you give him a Hall of Fame vote?

[Troy McClure]

Did you ever go into a season with Eli as a top three QB? The Hall of Fame is supposed to be the best of the best. Eli has played a long time, and I don’t think two different runs of playing really well for a month in the playoffs should alone get him in.

 

[Voight]

Plaxico Burress, Victor Cruz, Amani Toomer don't ring a bell? Brandon Jacobs and Tiki Barber? Yeah he had no weapons.

Most of you caping for Eli, clown him when he throws picks.

Not as many as comparable QBs. Most notably the other two big ones from his draft.

No they were the ones keeping their team in the game.

They didn't win the game. He did. Not denying they played a significant part but he wasn't just another Brad Johnson or Trent Dilfer.

 

[Alex Jones]

Throwing this one out there to get flamed... I'd go no on Eli, yes on Romo

 

[Alex Jones]

Did you ever go into a season with Eli as a top three QB? The Hall of Fame is supposed to be the best of the best. Eli has played a long time, and I don’t think two different runs of playing really well for a month in the playoffs should alone get him in.

He had a couple of really good seasons, but too me he was never really more than above average.

I would put it this way, I never feared playing him

 

[Hasbro]

Not as many as comparable QBs. Most notably the other two big ones from his draft.



They didn't win the game. He did. Not denying they played a significant part but he wasn't just another Brad Johnson or Trent Dilfer.

Johnson is no Hall of Famer but he doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the likes of Dilfer.

 

[Voight]

Throwing this one out there to get flamed... I'd go no on Eli, yes on Romo

Why, when he's ahead of him in pretty much every category?

 

[YEM]

Throwing this one out there to get flamed... I'd go no on Eli, yes on Romo

I mean...it's interesting
one guy played his best in somewhat meaningless regular season games and has a laundry list of chokes in big time situations & the other guy played his absolute best in huge moments with long periods of less-than-stellar play during regular seasons...

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Throwing this one out there to get flamed... I'd go no on Eli, yes on Romo

Talk about a QB that got screwed by the team around him. Romo was the shit.

 

[tony d]

Yeah he will. Over 300 career TD's, 2 Super Bowl wins and the Manning name. He's not 1st ballot but he'll make it in the Hall of Fame.

 

[Reality Check]

I don't really think of Manning as one. But that second SB trophy I think will get him in.

Both happening to be clutch drives against the most successful team in terms of rings for the past 15-20 years.

 

[Alex Jones]

I don't really think of Manning as one. But that second SB trophy I think will get him in.

Both happening to be clutch drives against the most successful team in terms of rings for the past 15-20 years.

Seems to me like people want to put Eli in the Hall for two games.

The myth of the 'clutch' player is going put this guy in. Fun fact, there's no real statistical evidence to show that certain players perform better or worse than their averages in high pressure or important situations.

Here's the truth about Eli Manning.

When you take away literally two games nobody in their right mind would think this guy belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Let's look at the stats.

Guess which one is our supposedly HOF QB??

QB1: Completes at 65%, averages 12.1 yards/catch, throws 37 passes/int, and apx 17.5 passes per TD.

QB2: Completes at 60%, averages 11.7 yards/catch, throws about 19 passes/int, and averages about 13 passes per TD.

QB3: Completes at 62%, averages 11.5 yards/catch, throws about 19 passes/int, and averages about 13.4 passes per TD.

QB4: Completes at 62%, averages 11 yards/catch, throws about 29 passes/int, and averages about 15.85 passes per TD.


How would you rank these guys????

 

[Hasbro]

Let's look at the stats.

Why even watch the games?

 

[What the Faulk]

Let's also put Donovan McNabb in the hall of fame because he was on a good team for a long time and won a bunch of games. Let's put Joe Flacco in the hall of fame because he won a super bowl after getting hot for 4 games (which is even debatable, RAHIM MOORE). Let's put Carson Palmer in the hall of fame because he has good numbers because he's been around forever.

Analysis | Eli Manning’s career isn’t worthy of the football Hall of Fame

Here, I'll skip all the numberical stuff that some posters' brains can't handle.

Take a look at the The Keltner List, a series of subjective questions formulated by famed sabermetrician Bill James used to help assess whether a player deserves to be elected to their sport’s Hall of Fame. Even the first few questions are enough to sway proponents away from Manning’s cause.

Was Manning ever regarded as the best player in the NFL? Did anybody, while Manning was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in the NFL? No and no.

Was Manning the best player in football at his position? No.

Was Manning the best player on his team? Not always. Tiki Barber had better years (2005, 2006 and 2004) than Manning. Michael Strahan had 11.5 sacks in 2005 and, like Brady, was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame 1st team All-2000s Team. Odell Beckham Jr. is widely considered one of the best receivers in football, and he is certainly considered better than Manning at this point of their careers.

And I’ve purposely steered clear of Manning’s Super Bowl accolades in relation to his Hall of Fame resume. While important — he is a two-time Super Bowl MVP — football is a team sport, and it is unfair to assign team wins and losses, even in the playoffs, to any individual player.

It has been a marvelous career for Manning, just not one worthy of enshrinement in Canton.

 

[Blackhawkswincup]

Lets be honest

Eli is better then several QB's in the HOF (Bob Griese , Terry Bradshaw , Troy Aikman , Ken Stabler and Joe Namath) and is in same class as guys like Elway and Kelly

 

[JRull86]

Will he get in? Yep.

Should he? Debatable, but leaning towards no.

I look at him more along the lines of Hall of Very Good.

 

[Hasbro]

Analysis | Eli Manning’s career isn’t worthy of the football Hall of Fame

Here, I'll skip all the numberical stuff that some posters' brains can't handle.

Oh I get it. You got sold on a secret formula that supposedly lets you gage the worth of a player with a 2 second glance and assume something as complex as a human being working on the field with 10 other people, versus 11 other people, both coached by other people, in varying conditions, using varying methods of operation, can are numerically comparable with a few underdeveloped metrics shoehorned in from baseball, like they are just an interchangeable part. It seems to be quite the self-esteem booster.

It's also a symptom of fantasy football, where everyone got so invested in players just getting their players getting stats and couldn't even tell you the score of the game.

Makes me long for the days where you only had to contend with degenerate gamblers who only cared about beating the spread.

Brilliant analysis by Greenberg there talking about Elway's career and not even bringing up Dan Reeves. Proves my point about stats being a superficial exercise in football.

 

[What the Faulk]

Oh I get it. You got sold on a secret formula that supposedly lets you gage the worth of a player with a 2 second glance and assume something as complex as a human being working on the field with 10 other people, versus 11 other people, both coached by other people, in varying conditions, using varying methods of operation, can are numerically comparable with a few underdeveloped metrics shoehorned in from baseball, like they are just an interchangeable part. It seems to be quite the self-esteem booster.

It's also a symptom of fantasy football, where everyone got so invested in players just getting their players getting stats and couldn't even tell you the score of the game.

Makes me long for the days where you only had to contend with degenerate gamblers who only cared about beating the spread.

Brilliant analysis by Greenberg there talking about Elway's career and not even bringing up Dan Reeves. Proves my point about stats being a superficial exercise in football.

It's breathtaking how dumb this is so I'm basically going to ignore it.

Eli's argument boils down to being average to slighty more than that for 10 years while being on a team good enough to win the Super Bowl and people like you eat that up because you still think it's 1985 and that a single player represents a team statistic.

 

[Hasbro]

It's breathtaking how dumb this is so I'm basically going to ignore it.

Eli's argument boils down to being average to slighty more than that for 10 years while being on a team good enough to win the Super Bowl and people like you eat that up because you still think it's 1985 and that a single player represents a team statistic.

Whereas you think a few statistics represent a player.

One of the inventors of that school of thought can even get his team out of the cellar (and it's a cellar in the since of Jamie Gumb's cellar in this case). It's almost as if this statistical thinking might not apply to football!

And you site an article where the author is surprised about Elway becoming a better player later in his career, which I understand is something that never happens in sabrmetrics. What could have changed at that point in Elways career that made the all important stats take a jump...

 

[member 51464]

Hmm, so do you all have the same answer, whether yes or no, for Big Ben?

 

[What the Faulk]

Hmm, so do you all have the same answer, whether yes or no, for Big Ben?

Their resumes are virtually identical. I don't think either deserves to get in, but I think Eli will based on his name. The only ones I'm putting through that are active right now are Brady, Brees, and Rodgers with room for several others if they keep performing at a high level.

 

[Voight]

Let's also put Donovan McNabb in the hall of fame because he was on a good team for a long time and won a bunch of games. Let's put Joe Flacco in the hall of fame because he won a super bowl after getting hot for 4 games (which is even debatable, RAHIM MOORE). Let's put Carson Palmer in the hall of fame because he has good numbers because he's been around forever.

Analysis | Eli Manning’s career isn’t worthy of the football Hall of Fame

Here, I'll skip all the numberical stuff that some posters' brains can't handle.

I can't believe someone compared him to Flacco/McNabb. Oh boy.

 

[Blitzkrug]

The Flacco comparison is a bit of a reach imo, but the McNabb one is bang on. Same level of QB, one just happened to luck ass first into a team capable of a playoff run.

As far as i'm concerned, the only guys i'd put in the hall out of this crop of QB's is Rodgers, Brees, and maybe Rivers (Brady/Peyton are stone cold locks so no point even bringing them up)

Rivers is basically if Eli decided to not be painfully average for the first half of his career. Brees is a no brainer. Hair shy of 70k passing yards, will likely be the all time leader in passing yards by sometime next season, will probably eclipse 500+ passing TD's. He's in with or without the SB win.

 

[YEM]

Eli's argument boils down to being average to slighty more than that for 10 years while being on a team good enough to win the Super Bowl

he's not average or slightly better than that
he's way above that

his first full year as a starter, these guys started more than 10 games:
kyle orton, aaron brooks, gus frerotte, joey harrington, brooks bollinger, trent dilfer, david carr, chris simms, kelley holcomb, brad johnson, byron leftwich, jake plumber, trent green

midway through his career:
blaine gabbert, christian ponder, sam bradford, rex grossman, tim tebow, colt mccoy, josh freeman, mark sanchez, tavaris jackson, kevin kolb, matt moore, matt schaub, matt hasselbeck

 

[The Burdened]

No.

I don't buy into the "but muh SuperBowls!" propaganda.

He was never ever close to being in the convo for being one of the best at his position during his era.

 

[Michael Farkas]

There is no real convincing case to put Eli in the HOF other than the odd fetish NFL fans have with winning one game in the shortest playoffs in sports. It's bizarre that that carries so much weight (enough to make a top-10ish QB of all-time like Tom Brady get talked about like he's a #1, for instance...same with Joe Montana, who is probably a rung up on Brady, but probably not top 3).

There's 28 QBs in the HOF. Let's examine some of the "worst" and compare some things statistically to Eli...

Eli Manning
2x Super Bowl MVP
Never First- or Second-Team All-Pro
Top-8 finishes in passing yds: 4, 5, 5, 6, 6
Top-8 finishes in passing TDs: 2, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8
Top-8 finishes in comp%: N/A
Top-8 finishes in int%: 7
Top-8 finishes in QB Rating: 7

##

Joe Namath
1x Super Bowl MVP
1x AFL Player of the Year
First-Team All-Pro: 1968
Top-6 finishes in passing yds: 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 6
Top-6 finishes in passing TDs: 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5
Top-6 finishes in comp%: 2, 4, 4, 4, 5
Top-6 finishes in int%: 3, 4, 4, 6
Top-6 finishes in QB Rating: 3, 3, 4, 4, 6
Some asterisks here as Namath played his first five seasons in a split-professional setting.

Troy Aikman
1x Super Bowl MVP
Never First- or Second-Team All-Pro
Top-8 finishes in passing yds: 4, 8
Top-8 finishes in passing TDs: 3
Top-8 finishes in comp%: 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 8
Top-8 finishes in int%: 1, 2, 8
Top-8 finishes in QB Rating: 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8

Terry Bradshaw
2x Super Bowl MVP
1x NFL MVP (+ 1x Bert Bell Player of the Year)
First-Team All-Pro: 1978
Top-6 finishes in passing yds: 3, 5, 6
Top-6 finishes in passing TDs: 1, 1, 4, 5, 6
Top-6 finishes in comp%: N/A
Top-6 finishes in int%: 4, 6
Top-6 finishes in QB Rating: 2, 5, 6


The goal of the HOF isn't just try to fit people under a given low bar by rationalizing and compounding previous mistakes...which Aikman, for instance, likely was...or even Bradshaw. The idea is to put deserving players in the HOF and not water it down. I made a very simple statistical formula based on finishes as outlined above for every season in professional football history to date.

For those looking to vet it off-hand, the top-5 currently sits as: Sammy Baugh, Peyton Manning, Fran Tarkenton, Otto Graham, Johnny Unitas. Not bad.

All of the top 15 are in the HOF by my rudimentary metric except for Peyton, Brees, Brady, as they aren't eligible yet, obviously. The highest QB ranked that is not in the HOF is #16 - Ken Anderson. Which most people would agree is just about the best QB eligible for the Hall who is not in.

There are 28 QBs in the HOF. In my metric all of the 28 fall in the top-48 (which again, includes active players who will be in) - except one, Terry Bradshaw (71st). The rest of the bottom five of HOFers are John Elway (48), Jim Kelly (45), Bob Waterfield (43), Troy Aikman (42).

Eli Manning will almost certainly be adding zero points to his resume...he currently ranks: 108th. Harry Newman, Greg Landry and Matt Hasselbeck in the three spots ahead of him. Glenn Presnell, Matt Schaub and Bill Nelsen in the three spots behind him.

In other words, it would take an unbelievably disproportionate amount of weight to be placed on winning two games in non-consecutive seasons (as blessed as we are that those happened) to even remotely come close to even considering him a HOFer.