Big Blue View
The Pro Football Hall of Fame Wednesday announced 52 candidates for the 2026 Modern-Era Hall of Fame class, and for the second time, New York Giants great Eli Manning will be part of the conversation:
Manning survived the first round of selections that reduced the initial list from 128 to 52 players who will be considered by the full 50-member HOF Selection Committee. The next round will reduce this list to 25 semi-finalists.
Considering that Manning was a finalist last year, one of 12 who were not admitted to the Hall of Fame, it will be a shock if Manning’s candidacy does not survive at least to the semifinal round, where the list will be narrowed to 15 finalists. That announcement will be made in about five weeks. After that, though, things get dicey for several reasons:
In my opinion, the Hall of Fame rules are archaic. There can be no fewer than four and no more than eight players elected every year. A casual perusal of the list of 52 above, though, shows that there is a backlog of great players who have not gotten in. Some of them have been candidates for a long time. Last year the Hall admitted only four, the minimum number allowed. The reason is that the Hall added two other layers of voting in the which the list of finalists was narrowed to 10 and then to seven after discussion by the selection committee, before yet another vote was taken to determine the actual inductees. The HOF says it does this to ensure that the HOF remains “elite.”
Baseball, by comparison, has a simpler process. Once the ballot is created, voting is done by mail, and anyone who gets 75% of the vote is in, with a maximum of 10 inductees per year. That process has its own problems, with some voters feeling that even the greatest players should not get 100% of the vote, others valuing stat accumulation over more intangible evidence of impact, certain positions being favored over others, the PED issue, etc. Compared to the gauntlet that the PFHOF has set up, though, it is very straightforward.
Last year, Eli made the final 10, but it was leaked that his candidacy generated “vigorous discussion” and that he did not even make the cutdown from 10 to seven, much less from seven to the four who were selected.
According to Jordan Raanan:
The biggest obstacle, according to some voters in the room, was that Manning was never really in the discussion as the best player at his position for a chunk of his career. He had Hall of Fame moments — including taking down Bill Belichick and Tom Brady twice on the biggest stage — but not necessarily a Hall of Fame career otherwise.
Other factors that may have come into play were his .500 career record, large number of interceptions, and failure to win a playoff game outside of his two Super Bowl runs (he was 0-4 in those...
