These five Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame snubs may not be the easiest cases, but their resumes deserve a much closer look from Canton.
As we all know, the Dallas Cowboys have plenty of gold jackets and busts in Canton, Ohio, but that doesn’t mean the Hall of Fame has finished telling their story. That is where this list I built comes in.
I wanted to rank the top 10 Dallas Cowboys who still deserve a real Hall of Fame conversation, but I didn’t want this to be just another nostalgia piece. Everybody has favorite players, and remembers a guy a certain way, but the Hall of Fame argument has to go deeper than that.
So I looked at the resumes, the awards, the era, and how these Cowboys compare to players already in the Hall at the same positions.
The first part of this two-part series will be No. 10-6. These are not all slam-dunk snubs or cases, but I think every one of them deserves more respect than they usually get.
Ralph Neely is probably the hardest sell on this list, but I still think he belongs in the discussion.
Neely was a two-time Pro Bowler, three-time 1st-Team All-Pro, one second-team All-Pro, a two-time Super Bowl Champion, and a member of the NFL’s 1960s All-Decade Team.
The All-Decade Team part is important. You don’t land on a list like that unless people around the league viewed you as one of the best at your position.
That doesn’t mean Neely should be treated like Rayfield Wright or Bob Brown. Those guys had stronger cases, but Neely was part of the foundation that helped turn Dallas into a real NFL power.
He is obviously not a modern ballot kind of name, but he is a senior committee case, and that’s fine. Those are the exact types of players that group is supposed to go back to and study.
Lee Roy Jordan was one of the main voices of the Cowboys’ defense before “America’s Team” became the brand everyone knows.
He was a one-time All-Pro, five-time Pro Bowler, Super Bowl champion, and the middle linebacker Tom Landry trusted to run his defense. I think that alone should carry some weight.
Jordan also had 32 interceptions, which we all know is a big number for a linebacker. This is where I believe his case gets better, because when you compare him to some Hall of Fame linebackers, especially Sam Mills, Lee Roy Jordan doesn’t look out of place.
The biggest issue I could find is the era he played in. Defensive stats were not tracked like they are today. There were no pressure rates, coverage grades, or weekly clips going viral. A lot of older linebackers got lost in that gap.
Lee Roy Jordan should not be one of them.
Cornell Green is one of those Cowboys players...
