Meet the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2015

There's no such thing as an easy journey to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Every player, coach and executive who achieves football "immortality" overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles and spends at least part of his career wandering in the wilderness.

Heisman Trophy winners find themselves unwanted and benched. Dedicated front-office lifers are forced to take last-chance jobs with down-and-out organizations. Perennial All-Pros become defined forever by one bad afternoon. Asthma nearly claims a great career before it starts. Bipolar disorder turns an inspirational leader into a pariah.

The dark dangers of a lifetime of vicious hitting claim one of the greatest of the great, reminding us that "immortality" is a mere metaphor.

Most of the biographies you are about to read begin at the bottom: The moment when the Class of 2015 inductees lost their way, when a bronze bust in Canton looked like a laughable dream. These men were defined by their darkest hours. They rose above those darkest hours to achieve something powerful and permanent. The one who suffered the most permanent tragedy is the one who left the most powerful and important legacy.

Here they are, the eight members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2015, a group of brilliant, thrilling, hardworking, overpowering and very mortal individuals.

Jerome Bettis, Running Back, Steelers

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Jerome Bettis was ready to call it quits.

It was the spring of 2005, and the Steelers had gone 15-1 the previous season, only to suffer a heartbreaking loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. Bettis was 33 years old. Twelve years of broken tackles and grinding runs for the end zone had taken its toll.

He was no longer a full-time starter, though he always seemed to be the one hammering out a 140-yard game when the chips were down. He had a new baby on the way. His Steelers kept stopping just short of the Super Bowl. What sense did it make to sacrifice himself for another year?

The retirement rumors hardly classify as rumors; Bettis spoke openly to everyone about the uncertainty of his return. Bettis consulted with recently retired greats like Rod Woodson, Troy Aikman and Howie Long about the proper time to hang up the spikes. He heard different opinions and weighed his options.

"I was very, very close to retiring," Bettis said in late July. "In fact, I talked to the team and told the team that I was retiring. I was pretty much done."

Uncertainty was always a part of Bettis' football life, starting when he passed out during a high school practice at age 14. Bettis was diagnosed with asthma. At times, his mother was tempted to ban him from football in favor of his first sport: bowling.

Bettis learned to manage the ailment instead, but asthma always lurked in the background. On one humid September afternoon against the Jaguars in 1997, on the way to rushing for 114 yards, he needed an emergency injection on the sideline to keep him breathing.

Bettis overcame both his ailment and a brutal Detroit neighborhood. He became a two-way star—and an officer for the National Honor Society—at MacKenzie High School.

Better known as a linebacker than a rusher in high school, Bettis switched to fullback at Notre Dame, where he starred in a system filled with options and old-school T-formations. But the uncertainty returned when the Rams used the 10th overall pick in the 1993 draft on Bettis, a player they envisioned as the perfect Chuck Knox halfback.

"I was pretty unsure as a football player because the team was asking me to make a change," Bettis said of his rookie year. "They were asking me to change from fullback, a position I knew I was very comfortable with and considered myself one of the best, to tailback, where I was uncertain and didn't have a lot of experience.

"I buckled down and thought to myself, 'I can get it done. I can be a good pro.'"

Bettis flourished in the Ground Chuck offense as a rookie, rushing for 1,429 yards, but uncertainty returned yet again as the Rams changed cities and changed offenses. The Rams overused Bettis in his second year, slamming him into a brick wall behind an ineffective offensive line. Then they underused him. The beat-up, worn-down Bettis, a beloved young star in Los Angeles, got booed, then benched, in St. Louis.

"They went in a different direction with the offense," Bettis said of his tumultuous final year with the Rams, a season marred by foot injuries, conditioning issues, a brief contract holdout and public criticism from his head coach. "It was frustrating for me, because here I am, having success, and all of a sudden we want to change everything."

"It was a tough situation. And I was young. I handled it the best that I could. But ultimately, when your numbers go down, you're affected by it." The Rams considered moving Bettis to fullback. Instead, they traded him to the Steelers.

Bettis achieved lasting stardom in Pittsburgh: The frustrated, tentative runner was gone forever; the lovable bowling ball returned for six straight 1,000-yard seasons and regular playoff appearances. Bettis became "The Bus" to NFL fans when legendary Steelers broadcaster Myron Cope resurrected a forgotten college nickname. Bettis' bruising runs and soft-spoken personality complemented the Steelers' defense-oriented philosophy and Pittsburgh's steel-forged self-image perfectly.

But by 2004, The Bus was a battered situational runner. Uncertainty returned one last time, this time about the wisdom of suiting up for one more season.

"Everyone's career will end, so you have to figure out when is your time," Bettis told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Ed Bouchette in February 2005. "That's a very delicate issue because, as a competitor and as an athlete, you never think that your day has to come, so it's frustrating."

But Bettis did not retire. "In the 12th hour I was convinced to come back and give it one more shot," he said last month.

The Steelers rallied around Bettis. Ben Roethlisberger promised The Bus that he would lead the team to the Super Bowl. Bettis ceded many of his carries to Willie Parker but thrived as a short-yardage maestro. He rushed for nine touchdowns in the regular season, three more in the playoffs. He ran for 101 yards and two touchdowns to get past a tough Bears team, then added three more touchdowns to clinch the playoffs against the Lions.

Super Bowl XL took place in Detroit, where a burly, asthmatic kid once collapsed on a football field and needed an ambulance ride to the hospital. We heard the yarn a few too many times during the pregame hype, but the retelling made it no less remarkable: The sickly kid from the rough neighborhood, T-formation fullback, Rams disappointment and over-the-hill lovable bruiser who was all but retired a few months earlier was playing in the Super Bowl.

Bettis would not star in Super Bowl XL, rushing for just 43 yards. But his Steelers won, removing any uncertainty from his Hall of Fame credentials. "Had I not won anything, I would have been one of those guys who was really good...BUT," Bettis said.

"To be able to win that championship, it takes that 'but' away."

That final "but" was just one more obstacle Bettis had to lower his shoulder into and drive to the ground on his way to the Hall of Fame.

Tim Brown, Wide Receiver, Raiders

PAUL SAKUMA/Associated Press

Al Davis had plans for Tim Brown when the former Heisman Trophy winner and sixth overall pick in the 1988 draft returned from a knee injury in 1990.

They weren't big plans. They weren't sound plans. But they were Al Davis' plans, so no one in the Raiders organization was going to question them.

"He told me that he wanted me to be the best punt returner and third-down player to ever play the game," Brown recalled in a July interview.

Those were the days when Davis' legendary deviousness began getting the better of his legendary football genius and eye for talent. Marcus Allen, like the young Brown, had been relegated to a situational role for reasons only Davis truly comprehended. Allen chafed, but Brown was young and didn't want to make waves. He returned punts and played in the slot on third downs.

The Raiders made the playoffs each year with Allen and Brown in relegation, and guys like Swervin' Mervyn Fernandez and over-the-hill Roger Craig or Eric Dickerson as their receiving and rushing leaders.

"We should have been a very dominant team," Brown remembered. "But we spent more time fighting against ourselves than we did against other teams."

Davis never wanted to draft Brown. He wanted offensive tackle Paul Gruber, who went on to a very good career with the Buccaneers. Ron Wolf, Davis' top deputy at the time, could not trade his way up to Gruber. "Al was not in the room when [we] picked Tim Brown," Wolf recalled. "He was upset at the fact that we couldn't get up there."

So Davis was stuck with Brown, the kind of dynamic playmaker the speed-obsessed Davis usually coveted. Perhaps Davis felt Brown didn't fit the marauding madman image Davis spent two decades cultivating. Brown had whistle-clean habits and a soft-spoken personality.

He admitted to being a little soft and naive at the start of his Notre Dame career; after the Miami Hurricanes got into his head in an extra-rugged game, Brown began developing his physical and mental toughness. "You can be a goody-goody guy off the field," Brown said. "But on the field, only the strong survive."

Brown learned more about toughness and perseverance, from Allen and from other veterans, as he made a pair of Pro Bowls as a return man and increasingly longed for a larger role. Davis eventually acquiesced and gave Brown a starting job, in part because Fernandez got hurt, in part because defensive coaches implored Davis to give more catches to a receiver none of their cornerbacks could cover in practice. Brown caught 80 passes in 1993 and would not fall below 75 again until 2003.

The Raiders may have toughened Brown up, but Brown also smoothed a few of their rougher edges. Brown became a born-again Christian in the mid-1990s. He frowned on cursing and coarse talk, and he preferred to listen to gospel when lifting weights.

Past Raiders teams might have chained him to a Harley Davidson and driven him into a culvert. But late-'90s teammates respected his wishes. Pint-sized tough-guy running back Charlie Garner would see Brown coming and hush players having a naughty conversation. "Hey-hey-hey, Mister Brown is here," Brown recalls Garner saying, silencing the rough talk until Brown was at least out of earshot.

The cleaned-up, modernized Raiders were contenders again by 2000. Jon Gruden's West Coast offense replaced Davis' outdated bombs-away tactics. The Raiders threw short passes and won with precision instead of a mix of raw speed and intimidation. Brown had aged into a crafty route-runner who still had the wheels to cause trouble with the ball in his hands. It was the perfect situation for Brown, and he had the best wingman any receiver could ask for: Jerry Rice, fresh from a Hall of Fame career in San Francisco, like Brown a half-step slower but wiser than ever.

Brown and Rice led the Raiders to the Super Bowl, only to have the rug pulled from under them by Gruden, now coaching the Bucs on the opposite sideline with a better knowledge of the Raiders' playbook than the Raiders had.

The Raiders grew dark, suspicious and strange after that Super Bowl loss. But for a few years, they were a great team in Tim Brown's image: Professional, reliable, often dazzling, still tough as nails on the field.

Brown caught 1,070 passes for the Raiders, most of them from some other team's castoff quarterback, often in a system opponents had figured out a decade earlier, with everybody in the stadium knowing where the ball was going on third down. He also brought one last era of glory to football's fading mad genius and to a passionate nationwide fanbase that has had little to cheer for since.

Charles Haley, Pass-Rusher, Cowboys and 49ers

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Ronnie Lott's days of solving problems for the 49ers should have been over. He didn't play for them anymore after all. He was now a member of the Los Angeles Raiders, showering in the home locker room after a 12-6 win over his former team in September 1991.

Yet there was Lott, wearing only a towel, hurrying past reporters to the visiting locker room like a dad awoken at midnight by a bang in the yard. As the story was reported then and over the years, exasperated 49ers coaches had called on Lott to calm down friend and former teammate Charles Haley, pass-rushing superstar on a post-loss rampage.

News accounts depicted a wild scene. Haley had smashed his hand through a glass door. He cursed out Steve Young for throwing a pair of interceptions in the loss; some witnesses said at the time he even lunged to attack Young and took a swing at coach George Seifert. When teammates tried to calm him down, he shouted, "I don't want anyone from this losing team touching me."

What was not reported at the time: "Then he started bawling like a baby," teammate Michael Carter told the Dallas Morning News' Brad Townsend in 2010. Haley wasn't coping with typical postgame frustration. Something else was going on.

Lott's counseling turned out to be a mere Band-Aid. A few weeks later, Haley was on the postgame warpath again, this time after a victory over the Eagles. Haley said that 49ers coaches had "jumped ship on us." He said a few days later that football was "no fun anymore." He said many things that only reached newspapers in heavily edited form. The 49ers, who won Super Bowls in 1988 and 1989 seasons, were hovering below .500, and Haley had become a volatile malcontent.

Haley was always a wild man and loose cannon, a 1970s-style tough guy who didn't quite fit a league that was becoming more like a corporation than an all-boys speakeasy. "It's always been negative somewhere, and I've always been a misfit," he said in 1993 to the New York Times' Thomas George. "I've fought that all my life. It's been me against the world. You get tired." Before 1991, however, Haley was merely edgy. He had suddenly become incorrigible.

Haley would not be diagnosed with a bipolar disorder until 2002. He did not seek treatment in those final 49ers seasons: He was not ready for the 1990s therapy culture.

The NFL might not have been ready for it, either. The 49ers had no idea what to do with a player who might curse a teammate out one day and hug him the next, who graphically exposed himself to everyone within eyeshot, who legendarily punctuated, as Young has described, some of his grievances with bodily functions.

When the 49ers were a Super Bowl team in 1988 and 1989 and a 14-2 team in 1990, Haley was the best: 38 sacks in three years, 5.5 more in the playoffs, including two in Super Bowl XXIII. But a bipolar disorder can by definition bring extra-low lows with those extra-high highs.

Haley may not have known what was wrong, but he knew he made mistakes. "I screwed up," Haley told George two years after the 1991 blowup. "The main thing is, I'm one of the worst in the world at accepting losing."

Haley remembered those controversial final months in San Francisco during a July interview. "I was just mad at the world," he recalled. "I never looked at my side of the fence. I just pointed the finger at everybody who I felt betrayed me."

Salvation came in the form of a trade to the Cowboys. It was like a move from network television to Netflix: On the cocky, not-so-clean-living Cowboys, Haley's R-rated antics did not cause much of a stir. The Cowboys won from the moment Haley arrived, which brought out the best in Haley.

The Cowboys won two Super Bowls in his first two seasons, a third two seasons later. Haley had his run-ins with coach Jimmy Johnson, but Johnson was legendarily patient with temperamental superstars. There were no more fights with quarterbacks, or scatological protests or emergency calls to the opponent's locker room.

The Cowboys spoke instead of Haley's passion, work habits and intelligence. "He probably is in the top 1 or 2 percent of the intellects in the NFL," Jerry Jones told reporters before Haley faced the 49ers in the 1993 NFC Championship Game, one of several opportunities Haley had to vent his frustrations by keeping his former team from the Super Bowl.

As for those wagging genitals and obscene outbursts? "Charles is a very funny guy," defensive tackle Jimmie Jones said before the same game. "He's very humorous, always causing comical havoc in the meetings."

Johnson called Haley the missing piece of the Cowboys' championship puzzle. Haley's sack totals were not quite as high in Dallas as they were in San Francisco, thanks to injuries and a move from outside linebacker to defensive end, but he was the defender who dictated how opponents protected their quarterbacks.

Haley's three Super Bowl rings with Cowboys, plus the two he earned in San Francisco, made him the only player in pro football history with five rings. He was a starter for all of those teams, a star for most of them. 

The bipolar diagnosis seems obvious in retrospect. What's most remarkable about Haley's career, beyond the five Super Bowls, was how much he accomplished despite an illness that threatened to tear everything down around him. Haley's relationship with the 49ers—former owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. will present him— speaks volumes about how far we all have come.

The 49ers brought Haley back just a few weeks ago to speak to their rookies about the expectations of the upcoming season and the perils of the NFL life. "Why don't you all act like the white guys?" Haley said he told rookies who probably expected the typical Scared Straight pep talk from the typical NFL legend. "You never see them in the paper getting high or hitting people. Why don't you act like that?'"

"They all looked at me crazy," Haley said. It's a look he no doubt saw a few times before in a 49ers locker room.

Haley's 21st-century message was not politically correct or factually accurate. It probably was not the message the 49ers wanted him to deliver. But it was distinctly Haley's message: edgy, rough, heartfelt, a little divisive and in no way user-friendly.

Championships are rarely won by locker rooms full of choir boys. Haley's greatness came bundled with a nastiness that was sometimes dangerous to himself and teammates but was usually focused on terrorizing opposing quarterbacks and winning championships.

Haley understands himself better now, and we understand Haley a little better. Haley hated to lose so badly that it was nearly pathological. Luckily for us, and for him, he rarely lost.

Bill Polian, Executive, Bills

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No one wanted to play for the Buffalo Bills, even their own draft picks.

Who could blame a first-round hotshot for skipping out on the Bills in the early 1980s? The team was an ice-bound, small-market doormat. The Bills of the early '80s had won just one NFL playoff game, their championship glories relegated to the fast-fading AFL era.

Even O.J. Simpson couldn't lead them very far in the 1970s. No one chooses Buffalo for the nightlife or the weather, certainly not Jim Kelly, then a brash young college hotshot with a love of sports cars and sun. When the Bills chose Kelly in the 1983 draft, he chose the USFL's Houston Gamblers. By 1984, Buffalo was a 2-14 team with egg on its face and a real fear that it would not be able to sign its own draft picks.

Having lost his franchise quarterback to the USFL, Bills owner Ralph Wilson raided the upstart league of its young personnel talent, hiring Bill Polian away from George Allen's Chicago Blitz.

Polian's path to NFL power was as strange as any in football history. He had been a coach at Manhattan College and an academically prestigious New York prep school. After a few seasons as a Chiefs scout, Polian joined the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL as a scout, then became a personnel executive for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Prep schools, tiny colleges, Canada and the USFL: Polian was an off-the-radar hire as pro personnel director, but then again, the Bills had become an off-the-radar franchise.

Polian, not yet in full control of the organization, faced the difficult task of signing high draft picks who heard the siren song of the USFL above the blizzard warnings over Lake Erie. The Bills made a Virginia Tech pass-rusher named Bruce Smith the top pick in the 1985 draft, and Polian signed him to a four-year contract and got him into camp on time. Cornerback Derrick Burroughs, the Bills' second first-round pick who went on to start for several years, also signed a no-nonsense contract.

The Bills were beginning to do things differently, spending more money and pitching more aggressively. "Our approach was to try and put the very best team that we could on the field," Polian said in a July interview, "to put the past behind us and not get dragged down by it."

Polian rose to general manager. His next task: Retrieve Kelly from the USFL rubble. Kelly wanted a five-year, $10 million contract, a hefty sum at the time. The Raiders were reportedly sniffing around with trade offers and more devious plans to acquire the former USFL MVP. Kelly still hadn't warmed to Buffalo, and as the USFL battled to its death in a courtroom, the quarterback considered sitting out a full season while earning paychecks from the New Jersey Generals' owner.

"I have three options," Kelly told reporters in the summer of 1986. "I can see what Buffalo wants to do and play for them; they can trade me and get something for me; or I can sit out a year, which I don't want to do, and get paid by Mr. Trump."

Kelly did not sit home and get paid by The Donald. He signed with the Bills for $7.5 million. The Bills, struggling to fill Rich Stadium in those days, reported 3,000 new season-ticket sales the day Kelly signed.

Having lassoed Smith and Kelly, Polian finally had the power to add his head coach of choice. Polian caught Chiefs head coach Marv Levy's eye when Polian was just a low-level scout in the late 1970s.

"Being Marv Levy, he read the scouting reports and took an interest in me," he said. "That allowed me to have a career in professional football."

Polian began returning that favor, first making him a USFL lieutenant, then hiring Levy as the Bills head coach in the middle of 1986.

Polian used his scouting chops to surround Levy, Kelly and Smith with talent. He found Andre Reed, a star at tiny Kutztown University, in the fourth round of the same draft that produced Smith. A rugged center named Kent Hull arrived as an undrafted free agent while Polian negotiated with Kelly. A bold trade with the Colts brought Cornelius Bennett, the second overall pick in the 1987 draft and one of the best linebacker prospects of the decade.

Suddenly, the Bills were bailing out other franchises who could not sign their draft picks instead of trying to clean their own messes. They were no longer being dragged down by the past.

Thurman Thomas arrived in 1988, and Polian's Bills became the best team in the AFC for half a decade, perhaps the best sustained team to never win a Super Bowl. Polian rescued the whole franchise from irrelevance, and those four Super Bowl losses told a tale of determination and perseverance that has proved more memorable than the stories of the teams that defeated them.

Polian left Buffalo before the final Super Bowl loss. He resurfaced with the expansion Carolina Panthers for an unlikely encore. Instead of enduring multiple losing seasons while building slowly through the draft and counting on novelty to keep the seats filled, Polian signed veteran defenders Kevin Greene, Sam Mills and Lamar Lathon to create a defense that was instantly competitive. Other veterans supported young Kerry Collins on offense, and the Panthers went 7-9 in their first season, then 12-4—with a win over the Troy Aikman-Emmitt Smith Cowboys—in their second season.

Polian's Bills were NFL history's most respected losers. His Panthers changed the timetable of NFL success: Fans of three-win teams who dream of a quick turnaround have Polian and his quick-start tactics to thank. The NFL strives for the "Any Given Sunday" ideal of parity. Polian exemplified that ideal during an era when league wars and free agency might have turned the NFL into "haves" and "have-nots." He became the quintessential NFL executive, even though the Bills had to scour the rival leagues and Canada to find him.

Junior Seau, Linebacker, Chargers

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The Pro Football Hall of Fame demands that we approach with the wide-eyed wonder of children but also with the hard-earned wisdom of adults. 

So we remember the Tiaina Baul Seau Jr. who was selected to 12 Pro Bowls, who was one of the most disruptive defenders of his generation and who was among the most recognizable sports heroes in his city's history. We also remember a football player whose untimely death opened our eyes to the unseen dangers of America's brutal, beautiful obsession.

Seau was the greatest linebacker of the 1990s, perhaps the greatest defender of that era. His gifts, beyond his outstanding athleticism, relentlessness and passion, were versatility and unpredictability. Seau recorded 56.5 sacks, 18 interceptions and over 1,500 tackles. Opponents never knew whether he was rushing the passer, dropping into coverage, staying at home against the run or following a hunch about where the ball was heading. His own coaches sometimes didn't know, either.

"It didn't matter what the defense was," Tim Brown said in a July interview. "You always knew Junior was going to be able to do what he wanted to do. The offensive line was always in a flux just trying to figure out where this guy was going to be on a down-by-down basis."

Brown remembers Seau, a linebacker, covering him in the slot, using his massive size advantage to manhandle a receiver most players at his position would not be quick enough to catch.

"Junior was the one player that I really hated to play against more than any other player," Brown said.

Seau was the face of the San Diego Chargers. In fact, Seau was the face of the city of San Diego in many ways. The great-grandson of a village chief in Pago Pago, Seau was born in the city but moved with his family to American Samoa for several years. He returned to the San Diego area as a three-sport high school superstar, then a star at USC. The Chargers drafted Seau fifth overall in the 1990 draft, and the "Tasmanian Devil" became a symbol for his team and his community.

The Chargers reached the Super Bowl in 1994, and Seau was perhaps the only player on their roster whom a casual sports fan of the era could name. Few defenders have been as important to their franchises or their regions.

Seau starred for 13 years in San Diego. After three uneventful seasons in Miami and a brief retirement, he joined the Patriots in 2006. As a situational player and spot starter, the 38-year-old Seau helped New England go 16-0 in the regular season and come within a few plays of establishing itself as history's greatest team. He played two more seasons for the Patriots, then headed for what everyone hoped would be a happy retirement full of golf tournaments and restaurant management.

Instead, Seau killed himself on May 2, 2012. The National Institutes of Health determined after studying Seau's brain tissue that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Seau had never left the field with a concussion in his entire career, but of course he endured hundreds, if not thousands, of rough collisions.

Other NFL players had committed suicide, including Dave Duerson a year before Seau and Andre Waters in 2006. Concussions and their lingering effects were implicated in both Duerson's and Waters' suicides. But it took a legend of Seau's magnitude to change the national conversation. Seau's legacy is about much more than sack dances and Chargers glory. Seau alerted us to unseen risks, forced us to make smarter decisions and got us talking about something dangerous and frightening that could no longer be easily swept under the rug.

There may not be much talk about Seau's death at the Hall of Fame ceremony. The event's organizers want "to celebrate his life, not the death and other issues," executive director David Baker has said.

It's both a myopic policy and a futile one. Can you listen to Nirvana without thinking of Kurt Cobain? Can you look at Starry Night and not think of Van Gogh's torment? The life and death, the brilliance and the danger, are intertwined, and each informs the other. Seau was a great football player in life. His death helped change the game itself—and save countless future lives.

Will Shields, Guard, Kansas City Chiefs

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Will Shields blocked for Joe Montana, Warren Moon, Rich Gannon, Dave Krieg and Trent Green, as well as Elvis Grbac, Steve Bono, Damon Huard and others.

He blocked for Marcus Allen, Priest Holmes and Larry Johnson, as well as Kimble Anders, Donnell Bennett, Greg Hill, Tony Richardson and many more.

Shields worked for Marty Schottenheimer, Dick Vermeil, Gunther Cunningham and Herm Edwards. He blocked against a Bills defense led by Bruce Smith in his third playoff game and a Colts defense led by Dwight Freeney in his last. He shared a Pro Bowl roster with everyone from Dan Marino to Tom Brady, plus the occasional Vince Young.

Shields played guard for the Chiefs for 14 seasons. He became a starter when Dave Szott got injured on Opening Day in 1993 and did not miss a start until his retirement at the end of 2006. He made 12 Pro Bowl rosters. His charitable efforts won him a Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in 2003. He was part of a Chiefs offensive line—along with fellow Hall of Famer Willie Roaf and stalwarts like Szott, Tim Grunhard and later Brian Waters—that changed coaches, quarterbacks and running backs yet always remained in contention.

Longevity doesn't come easily for an offensive lineman. "There were some of those weeks where you were saying, 'Man, am I going to make it? Is my ankle going to hold up? Or my knee, or whatever got hurt the week before?'" Shields said in a July interview.

Shields relied on the Chiefs medical staff, a chiropractor and even some nontraditional therapies like acupuncture (he described walking around with needles sticking out of his body) to get though the seasons. "Sometimes you spent so many hours a week just getting treatment to make sure you made it for that next week."

Shields was an Outland Trophy winner, an All-American and one of the most decorated linemen in University of Nebraska history when he arrived in Kansas City. But he arrived unheralded as a third-round pick. The Chiefs traded their first pick for Montana that year. They used their second pick in the previous year's supplemental draft. Allen had also just arrived. All eyes were on Montana and Allen, not on the rookie guard. Which was a good thing, because the rookie guard was not very good.

"The first minicamp I got there, I was terrible. I struggled very bad, to the point that I was thinking I was gonna be cut." But Shields was a quick study. When Szott got hurt, Shields was a starter.

Those 1993 Chiefs were stopped one game short of the Super Bowl. It established a trend: big regular seasons, including three 13-win seasons, then playoff heartbreak, no matter who was coaching or quarterbacking.

The greatness of Shields and the Chiefs offensive line did not lead to Super Bowl glory, but it can be seen in the statistics of players like Priest Holmes, who rushed for 1,615 yards and 21 touchdowns in 2002 thanks to Shields blocks like this one on Ray Lewis.

It can be seen in Larry Johnson's back-to-back 1,700-yard rushing seasons in 2005 and 2006. It can be seen in Trent Green's string of 4,000-yard seasons, years when he rarely took a sack. It can be seen in the long tail end of Allen's career, when the veteran added 44 touchdowns to his total by following Shields and Co. to the end zone. It can be seen in Tony Gonzalez's development into the greatest tight end of all time, with the line handling most of the blocking chores so he could lead the Chiefs in receiving every year.

Shields even earned a sliver of fame few offensive guards ever achieve: He became a television pitchman for Boston Market restaurants. "You want real? I'll give you real: All-Pro guard Will Shields," the commercial's narrator says. "Who protects the touchdown boys? No glamour there. Somebody gets in the way of his running back, he says, 'Hello.'" Meanwhile, Shields folds into a hole on the line of scrimmage and crunches a defender, in almost the same way he crunched Ray Lewis in the earlier clip, before sitting down to a mighty sandwich.

That commercial's worth a thousand words. Shields: unglamorous protector for an unglamorous team for over a decade, carving out holes and getting a little bit of recognition for himself, all the while dedicating himself to the community as passionately as he dedicated himself to staying in the lineup.

Mick Tingelhoff, Center, Vikings

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Super Bowl IV is a hazy memory for those who remember it at all.

It's one of the least memorable Super Bowls: No Lombardi, no guarantees, no undefeated Dolphins or steel curtains. The most well-known highlights come from Chiefs coach Hank Stram, mic'd up by NFL Films, explaining how to "keep matriculating the ball down the field."

Many who know the quote and the clip don't even know it comes from a Super Bowl. But that Vikings-Chiefs Super Bowl of 45 years ago, almost forgotten outside of Kansas City, nearly ruined Mick Tingelhoff's reputation.

Tingelhoff had to block Buck Buchanan, one of football's largest men at the time and one of the best defensive tackles in history. For variety, he sometimes had to block Curley Culp, another huge tackle and future Hall of Famer. Stram liked to shift his defensive line so one of his king-sized tackles was head-up over the center, a common tactic now but a novel one then. Buchanan and Culp manhandled Tingelhoff, who was more accustomed to being free to pull, trap or charge after middle linebackers. The Chiefs hammered the Vikings 23-7.

Tingelhoff's defeat at the hands of Buchanan and Culp became one of those larger-than-life football myths by the time Tingelhoff applied for entry into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the mid-1980s. You would think he spent that afternoon snapping the football then waving Chiefs defenders into the backfield, not battling and coping against a pair of all-time greats on a muddy afternoon while wobble-armed tough-guy quarterback Joe Kapp tried in vain to outduel Len Dawson.

Tingelhoff had been a five-time All-Pro. He was the best center in the NFL in the late 1960s. He went on to start in three more Super Bowls after Super Bowl IV, blocking for Fran Tarkenton and Chuck Foreman instead of Kapp and Dave Osborn, battling the outstanding 1970s Cowboys and Rams defensive lines in the playoffs before facing the Steel Curtain or Al Davis' latest biker gang in an inevitable championship defeat.

But 17 seasons of exceptional play, without a single missed start, never seemed to matter. Tingelhoff was never even a finalist because the Hall of Fame committee of a generation ago remembered Super Bowl IV. Or thought they remembered Super Bowl IV.

Super Bowl IV is now a click away. You can watch it and decide for yourself. The Chiefs defensive tackles do, in fact, slice past Tingelhoff pretty often. Chiefs players, in general, make Vikings players look a little silly in that game. Pat Summerall also reminds viewers during the broadcast that Tingelhoff is facing an unfamiliar new tactic, one of football's largest men and the most feared defensive front.

So Buchanan got the better of Tingelhoff in a championship game. Russell beat Wilt. Koufax struck out Mantle. On this evidence, we denied Tingelhoff the Hall of Fame for 30 years?

Tingelhoff will no longer be denied. He will finally be recognized for starting 240 consecutive games—259 counting playoffs and Super Bowls. Both figures rank third on the all-time list, behind Brett Favre and fellow Vikings stalwart (and Hall of Fame snub) Jim Marshall.

He'll be remembered for playing with torn muscles and separated shoulders. He'll be remembered for joining a second-year expansion team as an undrafted 210-pound lineman from Nebraska, anchoring that team's offensive line until the Vikings were the best team in the NFL, then (after the merger) the NFC.

Tingelhoff is finally getting recognition for the 151 regular-season and playoff games his Vikings won, not the one (or four) that they lost. It's been long in coming, but Tingelhoff enters the Hall of Fame with fellow Nebraska alum Will Shields, another lineman with an endless career for a team that kept getting stopped short.

Tingelhoff's accomplishments were so timeless they outlasted the fading memories of the era when he was kept out of the Hall of Fame by fading memories. There are few testimonies to greatness quite like being remembered after your harshest critics are forgotten.

Ron Wolf, Executive, Packers

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Hard times had fallen on Titletown, USA.

It was the dawn of the 1990s, but the Packers were trapped in the past. The team had reached the playoffs just twice in the two decades since Vince Lombardi retired. The Packers were an outpost franchise in a legacy market that lived off its faded glory. As often as not, they were coached by one of their 1960s legends (Bart Starr, Forrest Gregg) and operated on a shoestring by an executive who was more a functionary than a visionary.

Ron Wolf feared that his best years, like the Packers glory days, were also fading into 1960s memories. He began his career as a scout for Al Davis in the maverick era of the AFL. He worked his way through the ranks to become a top Davis lieutenant, helping orchestrate the trade for Daryle Lamonica, vouching for Alabama rookie quarterback Ken Stabler and crafting one of the most memorable dynasties in sports history.

But Wolf left Davis' service to rule in hell: To take over the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in other words. Wolf clashed with owner Hugh Culverhouse in Tampa and left after two terrible seasons, returning to Oakland to contribute to the second half of the Raiders dynasty. Wolf had a say in the selections of Howie Long, Marcus Allen and Tim Brown, but Davis had the final say.

Wolf was in his early 50s by the time the Packers were in the market for a new chief executive.

"When I had the opportunity to come to Green Bay, people my age weren't being hired," Wolf said in an interview in late July. "I was convinced that I would never again have an opportunity to run my own show."

"I just wanted to get my foot in the door. I didn't care where it was."

Wolf and Green Bay proved to be a perfect match. Wolf brought with him Davis-like boldness and an eye for talent tempered with the wisdom of the Buccaneers failure. "I laid a huge egg in Tampa," he said. "I knew what I did improperly, what I did wrong. I vowed if I ever got that opportunity again, that would not happen. We were going to do it my way."

Wolf hired Mike Holmgren away from the 49ers, then the marquee franchise in the NFL. "He won 10 games one year with Jeff Kemp and Mike Moroski at quarterback," Wolf said of Holmgren's tenure as a 49ers assistant. "That convinced me. If you can do that, you can do a lot of things."

Wolf traded a first-round pick for a second-year quarterback whose four rookie pass attempts resulted in two interceptions and a sack. Brett Favre's coach in Atlanta, Jerry Glanville, saw an unreliable gambler with shaky work habits. Wolf saw another Lamonica or Stabler or more.

"What I saw in Brett Favre was what everybody who's ever watched him saw. It was the same thing: That dynamic quality he possessed. How important the game was to him."

"I thought he was the best player in the 1991 draft, bar none. And it turned out he was the best player in the 1991 draft."

Wolf then pulled Green Bay into the late 20th century by taking advantage of a new team-building technique: free agency. The Packers signed Reggie White, the NFL's first big-money free agent in the salary-cap era and still probably the best. White could have gone anywhere. Wolf convinced him to choose a frigid little city on the Great Lakes that was just awakening from a 20-year football slumber.

"What we were fighting was the perception that Green Bay was a terrible place to play," Wolf said of the White signing. "This was a stigma that we did our best to erase."

"It came down to having the belief that we could be representative again here in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as a professional football franchise and power."

Wolf's Packers did more than just become representative again. Holmgren, Favre and White inaugurated an era of excellence. Wolf's Packers won one Super Bowl and played in a second. The Packers team that won Super Bowl XLV and still competes for NFC championships is a direct descendant of those Favre-White teams, built in part by Wolf's son, Eliot, now the Packers' director of pro personnel.

Wolf did more than bring the titles back to Titletown. He brought back the romance and prestige. With Favre drawing a constant spotlight on Green Bay for 16 years, football's outpost became football's tiny treasure. Green Bay and the Packers now have it all: Traditional and modern, small-town and international, retro-chic but always a few plays away from reaching the Super Bowl.

It's all thanks to an over-the-hill executive who wasn't going to let his last chance to run his own show slip away.