San Francisco 49ers: Predicting Hall of Fame Chances for Patrick Willis

The retirement of San Francisco 49ers’ linebacker Patrick Willis came as a shock around the league. At only age 30, Willis was expected to stick around for years, slowly declining from All-Pro to Pro Bowler to savvy veteran before eventually giving his spot up to watch Chris Borland and NaVorro Bowman take over his role in the middle of the defense.

That was the expectation, anyway, but instead, injuries and a desire to be remembered just in his prime led Willis to hanging up his cleats far before anyone expected.

The next football-related question for this giant of San Francisco’s defense will be whether the 49ers will get to see him enter the Hall of Fame in five seasons. He has undeniably had a great career, but was it good enough to get to slip on a tacky gold jacket and be honored as one of the best to have ever played the game? Let’s take a look at his cases, both as to whether he should make the Hall of Fame and whether he actually will.

Should He?

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

For years, I’ve been calling Patrick Willis a “future Hall of Famer,” but that was based on some preconceptions Willis has broken. The normal arc for a great player doesn’t end after eight seasons, like Willis’ does. It’s more like that of Ray Lewis.

For the first decade or so of Lewis’ career, he was, undeniably, the best linebacker in football. He was arguably the best defensive player in football, and you could even make an argument he was the best player in football, period. He built up his reputation then as the premier middle linebacker in the game.

Then, aging started to happen, and Lewis dropped from being the undisputed best in the league to more of a “best emeritus” position—he was still playing at a Pro Bowl level for most of the rest of his career, but he was no longer quite the same dominant force he was in his prime. He had already put up Hall of Fame numbers in his 20s when he was the best linebacker in football. His career post-2003 or so was just padding of a sort; adding Pro Bowls and All-Pro selections to his resume to make it progressively more and more obvious he was a Hall of Famer.

Almost all of the greats have this sort of period. Jerry Rice had his years in Oakland when he was no longer the best receiver in football, but a very solid player everyone knew was going into the Hall of Fame. Joe Montana had his years in Kansas City. Peyton Manning has his current career in Denver. It doesn’t even always involve going to another team—Dan Marino’s last five or six years in Miami were padding for a legend’s reputation.

Willis, however, scraps all of that padding. He put in the prime of his career and then stopped. There’s no gentle decline into the twilight years of his career for everyone to gather around and praise him as the best of his generation, even as his skills erode. He played eight seasons at his best, and then nothing.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

This is a problem for Willis’ candidacy, believe it or not. There isn’t a magic number of tackles or sacks that makes you automatically a Hall of Famer. You become a Hall of Famer because people think you’re a Hall of Famer. 

Willis has essentially removed the section of his career where everyone gathers and agrees you’re a living legend who of course will end up in the Hall of Fame someday. NBC will never have a sit-down interview with him, talking about him chasing one last Super Bowl to cap off his legendary career. Young draft picks won’t get to talk about what an honor it is playing with a future Hall of Famer like Willis. There won’t be the same kind of consensus-building someone like, say, Brett Favre had, when everyone started his Canton clock the second he retired.

Without that consensus, people might start poking holes. Willis played only eight seasons—seven-and-a-half, really, considering he missed half of 2014 with his toe injury. His 112 games played would be very low for a Hall of Famer. The average Hall of Famer played 160 games. The average modern-day Hall of Famer played 185. Willis essentially is four-and-a-half seasons short of what a Hall of Famer “should” have played.

Counting only players who started their career after the AFL began in 1960, only two Hall of Famers played in fewer games than Willis has—Gale Sayers and Kellen Winslow.  The linebacker with the fewest games is Dick Butkus, and he played in 119. You arguably have to go to Jack Lambert and his 146 games played to have your first no-doubt, no-argument linebacker in the Hall of Fame. Even Barry Sanders, who is the first comparison to come to mind when you talk about players retiring early, played in 153 games.

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Willis made the Pro Bowl just seven times; only three of the modern-day linebackers in the Hall of Fame made it less than that—Andre Tippett, Rickey Jackson and Dave Robinson. Willis only was the primary starter in seven seasons, and every single modern-day linebacker started more years than that.

Willis doesn’t have a Super Bowl ring. Willis was never named MVP or defensive player of the year. If you start to look hard enough, you can poke holes in Willis’ resume. Has Willis turned himself into the next Terrell Davis, the next victim of the peak-prowess-versus-longevity debate?

My answer is no.

Yes, Willis’ resume is somewhat unique among modern-day players, but unique is not a bad thing. Willis made the Pro Bowl every single season he was a starter. The list of players who can claim that is very small.  As far as I can tell, it’s just Jonathan Ogden, Cortez Kennedy, Les Richter, Barry Sanders, Billy Shaw, Doak Walker and Jim Brown—all of them Hall of Famers. 

Willis was the first-team All Pro middle linebacker in five of his seven seasons—he wasn’t just a good player, but the best at his position in most seasons. Only six of the 18 modern-era linebackers in the Hall of Fame today have more All Pro nods than Willis does, and they all played at least five more seasons.

Jack Dempsey/Associated Press

Willis deserves to be a Hall of Famer because he was the best defensive player in football over his career. Only offensive tackle Joe Thomas matched his five All-Pro nods over that time period, and only eight other players made the Pro Bowl as often as Willis did, with DeMarcus Ware being the only other defender on the list.

The lack of a twilight to his career should not reduce the impact of the peak of his career. If you are the best at your position in your career, you belong in the Hall of Fame. If you were the best of an entire unit, then there shouldn’t be any doubt.

This isn’t a Terrell Davis case. Davis produced one very good year and three incredible years, but then nothing else. Willis doubled that. Eight seasons is a long time—much longer than the average NFL career and much longer than most players can stay solid. 

It involved playing in multiple systems for multiple coaches, so it’s not a simple matter of excelling in the best possible situation. Willis was the best player for horrible teams, and he was the best player on a Super Bowl team. Willis was great everywhere.

Willis put up seven seasons with 10 or more Approximate Value, which is roughly the borderline between making the Pro Bowl or not. That’s as many great seasons as Butkus, Warren Sapp or Ted Hendricks. It’s more than Jim Brown or Charles Haley or Ray Nitschke. The absence of a career in his 30s should count against Willis when it comes to talking about being the best linebacker of all time, not whether he should be in the Hall of Fame or not.

Bill Barnwell perhaps said it best over at Grantland:

"

Put it this way: Pretend Willis returned from his toe injury and wasn’t 100 percent. Maybe the 49ers see that in camp and rotate him with their three other inside linebackers before moving on after the season. Willis goes to Cleveland and spends three years as a competent inside linebacker there, he finishes up with a year under Bill Belichick in London, and then he retires with the same seven Pro Bowl appearances and five All-Pro berths. Is anyone really suggesting he’s not a Hall of Famer with that résumé? We’re saying that injuries sapped him, but the cumulative impact still points to Canton. Nobody doubted Barry Sanders’s Hall of Fame candidacy when he retired at 30. This is a player who was just as accomplished at a less visible position.

"

So, yes, I believe Willis should be in the Hall of Fame as soon as possible.

Will He?

The lack of a back-end to Willis’ career moves him from a slam-dunk consensus choice to a more debatable concept. For that reason, we have to have some idea of the competition he might end up facing when he first gets on the ballot—his odds would be helped, of course, in a weaker year.

In order to do that, I went ahead and tried to guess which 20 modern-day players will make the Hall of Fame over the next four years, and then came up with a list of the finalists Willis could be facing. To do that, I used Pro Football Reference’s weighted Career Approximate Value stat, and put the top five eligible players in each season. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do for a quick-and-dirty analysis.

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Class of 2016
QB Brett Favre
RB Edgerrin James
WR Marvin Harrison
WR Terrell Owens
LB Zach Thomas

Class of 2017
QB Randall Cunningham
RB LaDainian Tomlinson
OL Alan Faneca
OL Kevin Mawae
DE Jason Taylor

Class of 2018
WR Randy Moss
C Jeff Saturday
LB Ray Lewis
LB Brian Urlacher
S Ronde Barber

Class of 2019
QB Donovan McNabb
QB Boomer Esiason
QB Drew Bledose
CB Champ Bailey
S Ed Reed

There are certainly arguments to be made here—no Kurt Warner? A surprising lack of Patriots?—but it gives you a decent overview of the sorts of players who are coming up for consideration over the next few seasons.

You can see that, although there’s an upcoming backlog of great players, that dies out a little bit by 2019, with quarterbacks like McNabb, Esiason and Bledsoe being interesting candidates, but not slam-dunk Hall of Famers.

Due to players like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Julius Peppers continuing to extend their careers, we will enter something of a Hall of Fame gap in a few seasons. That works out rather perfectly for Willis; the more questions Willis’ opponents have, the more likely it is he’ll get ushered into the Hall.

Unless there’s another batch of mega-retirements in the next few weeks, then Willis has a relatively weak field to compete against. He may see Reggie Wayne and Justin Smith also take first-year ballot nods, but Willis compares very favorably to other linebacker candidates like Sam Mills or Pat Swilling.

He’s not a shoe-in, but the Hall has four years to unclog the backlog of candidates they’ll be seeing over the next three seasons.  After that, Willis should shine as one of, if not the, best candidate not already in the Hall of Fame. I predict he’ll get in early—on one of his first three opportunities, at the very latest.

See you in Canton, Willis.

Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the San Francisco 49ers. Follow him @BryKno on twitter.