Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame: NFC

Tomorrow night, we get the Hall of Fame game. Finally, a football-like substance on our TV! It's an annual tradition unlike any other – a day of excitement and anticipation for the first football game in half a year, and then the realization after about three minutes of watching Kenny Pickett and Carson Beck that, oh yeah, it's preseason football and not really that great. Still, even the smallest drop of brackish water for a survivor in the desert, right?

It's also the weekend the Hall of Fame inducts the Class of 2026. A weekend to honor Drew Brees and Larry Fitzgerald, first-ballot Hall of Famers and among the very best to ever play their respective positions. Adam Vinatieri, the NFL's all-time leading scorer. Luke Kuechly, one of only two linebackers to win Defensive Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year. Roger Craig, the first man to have 1,000 yards rushing and 1,000 yards receiving in the same season. It's a fairly loaded class, historically speaking.

It would be up there with the best classes to ever go into the Hall if Bill Belichick was included. The Hall has rightfully been the subject of criticism and ridicule over the past few months because of their rule changes which incentive voters not to vote for the obvious candidate in a misguided attempt to make the Hall more selective. Under the 2025 rule changes, candidates need 40 out of 50 votes in the final round to make the hall. Voters are only allowed a limited number of votes, so they are essentially penalized for being the 41st through 50th person to vote for a candidate, 'wasting' a vote which could otherwise go towards someone else they think is worthy of induction.

If you're sure someone like Belichick is going to be picked by everyone else in the room, why vote for him when that choice can help put Craig or Ken Anderson or L.C. Greenwood over the line? It's a tragedy of the commons situation – it's fine if one or two voters defect and end up not voting for Obvious Candidate, but if enough people take advantage of the freedom to not vote for the best guy, the best guy ends up not making it! It bit them in 2025, when they elected the smallest class in two decades, and then it really hurt them last year, with the omission of Belichick creating a furor the likes of which the Hall hasn't really seen before.

Ah well. In the long run, this will be fixed. Belichick will get in sooner rather than later. While the Hall didn't change the system this year in an attempt to defend the process, I suspect they quietly will tweak it in the next year or two to fix these bugs. And all will be right with the world once more. The Football Hall of Fame, generally speaking, has the best group of enshrine players in major sports. For the most part, and there are always exceptions, the people you expect to be in the Hall are, and the people you don't think should be aren't. In my opinion, it compare very well to the Baseball Hall of Fame, where you must pass a 96-point purity test before someone who hasn't covered the game in 15 years might consider voting for you, or the Basketball Hall of Fame, whose criteria appear to be "has seen either a basket and/or ball".

But even if you don't agree with me that the Hall's line is generally in the right place, there has to be a line somewhere, which means there are players on the other side of it. Over the next two days, let's go though all 32 teams and pick their best player not currently in Canton – the players who will be hoping to make up the Class of 2027.

Two important notes before we begin. I'm looking at players who have had the opportunity to make the Hall, but have not succeeded yet. Aaron Rodgers is the best Packer not in the Hall, but he's still active; he's not on this list. Tom Brady is the best Patriot not in the hall, but he's not eligible for two more years, so he's not on this list. Ben Roethlisberger is the best Steeler not in the Hall, but 2027 will be the first time he is eligible, so the committee hasn't had a chance to weigh in on him yet. We're looking for snubs, as it were, not players who haven't been talked about yet.

Secondly, "best player not in the Hall" does not necessarily mean "deserves to be in the Hall". The Houston Texans have only existed since 2002; they do not have a deep bench of qualified candidates banging on the doors. By definition, this list is going to mostly consist of borderline candidates, and some players won't even reach that mark. That's OK. Everyone's gotta have a best player not yet in, even if they never will get in.

Good? Great. Let's do the NFC, and Remember Some Dudes.

NFC East

Dallas Cowboys: TE Jason Witten
One-time finalist, 2026

I suspect it’s just a matter of if, not when, Witten gets the call for Canton, though I understand why he wasn’t a first-ballot, cut-the-line sort of player.  Fourth all-time in receptions, the fastest tight end to get to 600 catches, 11-time pro bowler – the black ink speaks for itself.  And few tight ends have ever been more reliable than Witten, or consistently valuable for such an extended period of time. Witten had 11 seasons with at least 100 receiving DYAR; only Tony Gonzalez had more among tight ends.  That’s kind of the rub, though – there’s a lot of categories where “only Tony Gonzalez” was better than Witten, and the Hall likes saving first-ballot slots for people who were clearly the best at their position during their career.  It’s hard for Witten to argue he was above Gonzalez.  Ah well.  All gold jackets count the same in the long run, and I doubt Witten will be left waiting for too long.

New York Giants: QB Eli Manning
Two-time finalist, most recently 2026

Ah, here we go.

Every Hall candidate has two parts to their resume.  You’ve got the raw onfield stats – how many yards you gained and points your scored, how many times you made a Pro Bowl or an All-Pro.  Things we can quantify and compare.  And then you’ve got the story – why this player is special and is an important actor in the history of the league.  That’s the “can you tell the story of the NFL without this guy” metric.  You don’t need to score highly in either category, but most good Hall candidates have both.

Eli is almost purely a story candidate, and it’s a good story.  Two Super Bowl rings, both times dethroning the Brady-Belichick dynasty Patriots?  No easy rings there, and even if they were, multiple Super Bowl rings typically get you in.  It’s a class of two, with Manning and Jim Plunkett, sitting on the outside looking in.  Yes, the two Manning Super Bowl teams were three of the worst teams since 1977 to win the Super Bowl, per DVOA, but they still won. Helmet catch, the pass to Manningham, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  This isn’t a “winner sauce” argument, at least not entirely – the Giants do not win those Super Bowls if Manning doesn’t play his mind out, and Eli’s role as the thorn in the Patriots’ paw is a hell of a story.  You can add to that having basically all the Giants’ passing records and starting for them for so long, and it’s not a bad case.

The problem isn’t that Manning was never the best quarterback in football.  The problem is he was rarely the tenth best quarterback in football.  Overall, Manning kind of set the bar for what average NFL quarterback play is during the bulk of his career – his average DVOA comes out to -0.5%.  His prime, from 2008-2012 is better, but even then – never in the top five in DYAR, never in the top five of DVOA, and you never felt like the Giants even had an argument for having the league’s best passer, or even the conference’s best passer.  Manning’s ability to show up in big games is important, but the greats also show up in the little ones, and Eli never really did that.

The voters seem to agree, at least a little – Manning has failed to make the cut to 10 in either of his two trips to the finalist room.  He’s still making the finalist list, which is important, and some in the room suggest he made a little progress last year, but there’s not a ton of momentum yet getting him in.  Too good to not talk about, not good enough to push through seems to be the Manning story at the moment.  Personally?  He’s got enough of a case to put him over any other Giant not yet in over the last 100 years; I’d take him over Tiki Barber or Phil Simms or Del Shofner or anyone else you can pull out.  And if it was a straight up-or-down is he in or is he not vote, you could sell me on him.  But I have a hard time imagining a ballot where Manning is one of the top five guys there.  At least, with the current voting system.

Philadelphia Eagles: RB LeSean McCoy
Zero-Time finalist, missed the cut to 25 last year.

The death of the bellcow running back means I’ll be very interested in seeing what the Hall does at the position going forward.  There are very few candidates left with true every-down status for an extended period of time left to really consider; McCoy is the more modern model of a productive back.  No one scored more touchdowns, ran for more yards or had more yards from scrimmage than McCoy did in the 2010s, and while that’s helped by picking those exact endpoints, he was electric. The Hall is not yet convinced; he didn’t even make the cut to 25 in his first year of eligibility.  That surprises me!  15,000 yards from scrimmage doesn’t grow on trees. Hopefully, he’ll get a little more of a hearing next year.

Washington: T Joe Jacoby
Three-time finalist, last in 2018

We may not need all the Hogs in the Hall, though it’s kind of odd that only Russ Grimm made it off of those great 1980s Washington lines.  He’s the only one of Washington’s linemen to start all four of Washington’s Super Bowls under Joe Gibbs – teams that finished in the top 10 in rushing DVOA in 11 of Jacoby’s 12 seasons as a starter.  Both Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White have singled Jacoby out as one of the toughest guys they ever had to play against.  Jacoby is currently lost in black hole that is the Seniors pool, but he did make the semifinalist stage last year, so he’s not totally out of mind of the voters.