Brett Favre and Beyond: The Best Possible 2016 Hall of Fame Class

Imagine 46 people selecting toppings for one giant pizza they must all share.

Everyone has toppings they love and toppings they cannot stand. The 46 people come from different regions: The Chicago delegation wants the pizza thick, the New York contingent thin, the Bay Area gang wants organic veggies and the Florida crew thinks seafood toppings are fair game.

There are generation gaps, so the old-timers want to know why everyone can’t just enjoy pepperoni, while the young and hip push hard for something like a Korean barbecue pizza. There are also people who have ordered the same perfectly satisfactory topping for 15 years and never gotten it—this is either the year of black olives or they’ll vote against cheese itself.

Welcome to the Pro Football Hall of Fame voting process! It’s a wonder we even get fed each year. The 46-person selection committee faces a backlog of qualified candidates and 32 revved-up fanbases ready to pounce on every perceived snub. Every Hall of Fame class is a compromise—the best possible assortment of legends for that year with an ever-growing to-do list for subsequent years.

With the Class of 2015 safely in Canton, Ohio, the committee must begin deliberations for next year. As usual, it won’t be easy to winnow down the candidates. Here’s some unsolicited help to make those February marathon meetings go a little more smoothly.

Also, committee members: Try the sauteed mushrooms. They’re amazing.

Morten Andersen, Kicker, New Orleans Saints/Atlanta Falcons

Morten Andersen is the NFL’s all-time scoring leader. He’s the NFL’s all-time leader in games played. He’s a seven-time Pro Bowler who played in the NFL for a quarter century. Why is he stuck on the finalist treadmill?

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Jan Stenerud remains the only pure specialist kicker in the Hall of Fame right now. Setting a high bar for specialists makes sense, but they should probably get in at a rate quicker than four per century. Stenerud was a great kicker for an outstanding team, as well as an innovator who helped soccer-style and European-import kickers gain acceptance.

Andersen was also an innovator; bigger, stronger, more athletic than the first generation of European kickers, he helped professionalize the craft of field-goal kicking while bucking the stereotype of the puny guy with the strange accent who would snap in half if forced to make a tackle. Modern kickers are the descendants of Andersen, who merged the best of the European and American kickers who preceded him.

He also may have been the best kicker ever, which counts for something.

Brett Favre, Quarterback, Green Bay Packers

Brett Favre is the most overqualified Hall of Fame candidate of any major American sport of the last 20 years, except for all of those baseball players who have been excluded because baseball voters think they are the archbishops of a religion. First-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famers are rare, but if Favre doesn’t get in right away, the committee should really consider streamlining its process. The committee should probably do that anyway but whatever.

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There could be a minor anti-Favre backlash based on his final seasons as a bigger-than-the-game guy who thought his retirement musings were America’s favorite daytime soap opera. Frankly, that’s more of an angry Twitter-guy sentiment than the true feelings of the typical veteran football columnist. Favre was the first transcendent sports star of the blogosphere era, the daytime-television sports-talk era and the early social-networking era.

We were still just getting used to the sheer power of 21st century media to turn real-or-imagined scandals into national obsessions, and Favre’s reputation bore the brunt of that for a while.

Reactions to Favre’s recent Packers Ring of Honor induction suggest the backlash has receded to the dark corners of the Internet and airwaves. That’s a lesson we should keep in mind when wondering how an overblown scandal will affect any other superstar quarterback’s legacy.

Kevin Greene, Pass-Rusher, Los Angeles Rams/Pittsburgh Steelers

I argued for Kevin Greene at length in a recent slideshow. To summarize: Greene is third on the all-time career sack list and was an important contributor to playoff teams in three different cities, but his candidacy has been hampered by numerous forces beyond his control.

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One of those forces was the fact he played several of his best seasons for the Los Angeles Rams, who have not existed for a few decades, leaving Greene without a local groundswell of support in the region where he did most of his best work.

Do you see where I am going? There’s a roughly 66.7 percent chance there will be a Los Angeles Rams again next year. What better way to mark the return of the Rams to Los Angeles than by honoring one of their great players from that bygone era? The Rams can play in next year’s Hall of Fame game, and enshrining Greene can help galvanize the region’s older fanbase while helping the rest of the football world adjust to the new landscape.

Greene’s candidacy has been gaining ground in recent years. We might as well vote him in when it will have the most symbolic impact.

Marvin Harrison, Wide Receiver, Indianapolis Colts

Some Hall of Fame candidates should receive Front of the Line Pass wristbands like you get for roller coasters at major theme parks. Favre should get one, as should Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Ray Lewis and a few others.

Pass recipients don’t get automatic induction, but the meeting to argue against them should be held on Christmas Eve somewhere in North Dakota. If someone is that motivated to be a voice of dissent, they can fly up to Minot, register their complaint by filling out a long document and get the Front of the Line Pass recipient back in the regular line. Otherwise, no precious debate time is wasted.

Chances are no one would fly to the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter to say, "I just don’t remember a signature moment” for Marvin Harrison.

Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

Harrison may not be a full-fledged Front of the Line Pass candidate; dole out too many wristbands and, next thing you know, the VIP line is longer than the regular line. But Harrison is close.

His candidacy does not hinge on the murky 2008 shooting outside of Harrison’s Philadelphia car wash because a) Pro Football Hall of Fame voters are not supposed to consider off-the-field incidents, except in extreme and unusual circumstances, and b) if an experienced district attorney couldn’t sort out the details of the incident, then the guys at the bottom of the message board probably don’t have them right, either.

Harrison has been waiting for two years because the committee sees huge receiving totals and has a massive groupthink brain cramp—they just spent the last few years processing Cris Carter, Tim Brown and Andre Reed, recent victims of the last groupthink brain cramp.

Harrison is overqualified, and if anyone is really worried about his “signature moment,” they should think of the Manning-Harrison pregame route-tree practice.

We spent a decade hearing how Harrison and Manning arrived an hour early, three hours early, the day before the game, flew backward around the globe to make extra time to practice their route tree together. It’s probably the most famous practice in history, and it led directly to 1,167 catches (regular season and playoffs combined), 130 touchdowns and eight Pro Bowls.

Ty Law, Cornerback, New England Patriots

There will soon be a backlog of Belichick-Brady Patriots knocking on the Hall of Fame’s door. Except for Belichick and Brady, nearly all of them are B or B+ candidates at best. The committee should sort through these 2000s Patriots as efficiently as possible to prevent bottlenecks or split-ticket confusion.

TONY GUTIERREZ/Associated Press

Ty Law typifies the problems that face all of the modern Patriots. He was a Pro Bowler on two Super Bowl winners. So far so good. He was injured midway through the 2004 Super Bowl season, but he was having a fine season and did his part to earn that third ring.

Law then became a Patriots cap casualty. He went on to have a phenomenal year for the Jets, then some good seasons in Kansas City and Denver, but the Patriots kept chugging on without him. With the Patriots making the playoffs or going undefeated every year and Asante Samuel inheriting Law’s Pro Bowl slot, Law began to look like just a slightly larger cog in the Belichick machine.

Of course, Law was an All-Pro before Belichick arrived, and the rise of the 2001 Patriots would not have been possible without one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks anchoring one side of the defense. His success with the Jets and Chiefs should also not be overlooked. Those parts of Law’s story need to be dusted off, and his role as a founding member of an eventual dynasty must be chiseled into the Patriots legacy.

With Law’s bust safely in Canton, we can start figuring out what to do with Richard Seymour, Adam Vinatieri, Tedy Bruschi and others.

Orlando Pace, Tackle, St. Louis Rams

We’re not forgetting about Rams fans in St. Louis, either. A 2016 Hall of Fame game in Canton would allow fans to zip across I-70 to say goodbye to the team they supported for 20 years.

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Okay, it’s an eight-hour zip. Most jilted Rams fans would probably just watch a Cardinals game or prepare for a Mizzou tailgate instead. But we can sweeten the deal for a road trip by enshrining a member of the Greatest Show on Turf. Ideally, we could wave Orlando Pace, Kurt Warner and Isaac Bruce in all at once. That would wipe the 1999-2001 Rams off the docket once-and-for-all (sorry, Torry Holt) so the committee can work on other things. It would also be a going-away present for St. Louis Rams fans.

The Hall of Fame doesn’t work that way; even the Vince Lombardi Packers couldn’t get into Canton three at a time. Pace queues up in front of the others because a) Warner would get overshadowed by Favre and deserves to be the lone quarterback in his class, b) Warner is in the public eye, so his candidacy is unlikely to lose steam, whereas even an offensive lineman of Pace’s stature has a slight risk of getting back-burnered, and c) Bruce is the third-best candidate and simply must wait his turn.

Inducting Pace also completes the set of great offensive tackles of the 2000s—Walter Jones, Jonathan Ogden, Willie Roaf and Pace. These four players changed our expectations of the left tackle position, and it’s only fitting for all four to be inducted as close together as possible.

Senior Committee Selection: Randy Gradishar, Linebacker, Broncos

The best senior committee candidates are probably Jerry Kramer, Cliff Branch and Jim Marshall. The most important senior committee candidate is Gradishar.

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The committee has been doing a great job backfilling the history of the NFL from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, rescuing players, such as Claude Humphrey and Elvin Bethea, who had the misfortune of not playing for the handful of dynasties that dominated both pro football and Hall of Fame voting for a generation.

Kramer, Branch and Marshall were members of well-represented perennial powerhouses. Randy Gradishar played for the Broncos, a franchise that is still under-represented in Canton. He played in the late 1970s, when non-Steelers-Raiders-Cowboys had a better chance at making the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame than the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Gradishar’s enshrinement will help tell a more complete picture of the NFL of that era.

Of course, if we could sweep Kramer, Branch, Marshall and Gradishar in at once, that would be swell. But the Hall of Fame doesn’t work that way.

Contributor Selection: Don Coryell, St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Chargers.

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Don Coryell was a poor fit as a candidate based on his coaching record—his Cardinals and Chargers teams were more groundbreaking than successful. And the recently added contributor category is technically for “outstanding contributions to professional football in capacities other than playing or coaching." But it’s not hard to argue that completely redefining football offense at all levels and influencing two generations of coaches, coordinators and executives is a contribution that goes beyond mere coaching.

The contributor category may be designed for general managers and commissioners, but Coryell changed the DNA of football the way no suit-and-tie executive has done in the last 40 years. Every time you see something as basic as an I-formation, you are looking at Coryell’s contribution.

Plus, Coryell has both a San Diego and St. Louis connection. Hey, I’m just trying to soften the blow, folks.