Is Tyreek Hill a Hall of Famer?

Welcome to another series of Football Outsiders Pro Football Hall of Fame debates! We kick off with a discussion of Kansas City Chiefs-turned-Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. Come back each Monday for Mike Tanier’s musings on other current players and past legends!

Pro Football Hall of Fame voters do not take off-field misconduct into account when selecting new inductees.

Them’s the bylaws. If a voter tried to pound the table to keep a player out due to an arrest or allegation, that voter would risk being removed from the committee. Many fans don’t even trust the selection committee to choose the right players based on tackles and touchdowns anyway. Nobody wants them to moonlight as moral arbiters. That’s a baseball problem, and baseball can keep it.

Oh, and since Terrell Owens and Antonio Brown will both come up later in this feature: “off-field misconduct” is not some pedantic/semantic barricade preventing the voters from discussing things like public feuds with players/coaches or going AWOL on your team in the heat of the playoff race. “Off-field” means “non NFL-related.” A wide receiver can’t punch his quarterback in the face in the tunnel before the Super Bowl, call the opposing coach from the parking lot and detail the whole game plan, then say, “Neener-neener, none of that matters, I am still a Hall of Famer.”

Hill was convicted of domestic assault prior to entering the NFL and was investigated for child abuse in 2019. All of these things matter in the real world, including the sad complexity of the abuse investigation (such investigations are often sad, complex, and inconclusive). But none of those things matter in Hill’s Hall of Fame debate. That’s worth clearing up before we start in an effort to (hopefully) tidy up the comment thread a bit.

Tyreek Hill, Three-Time All-Pro

Bill James liked to use the “black ink test” when discussing baseball Hall of Famers: the old Macmillan Encyclopedias (and now Baseball Reference, and Pro Football Reference for that matter) bold-faces the statistics of league leaders, so a player page full of “black ink” can form the backbone of a player’s argument. Pro Football Hall of Fame debates are less stat-driven, so I like to use the “stars and crosses” test to refer to what many fans do when kicking off their arguments: Tyreek Hill is already a three-time All-Pro (plus-signs or “crosses” on Pro Football Reference) and a six-time Pro Bowler (asterisks or “stars”). Therefore, he’s already a Hall of Famer before he even plays a down for the Dolphins, right?

Three-time All-Pros have a high probability of reaching the Hall of Fame. But one of Hill’s All-Pro selections and Pro Bowl berths came as a rookie return man in 2016. The committee is unlikely to be fooled or swayed by what’s something of a technicality. And keep in mind that the future voter who dings Hill for not being an All-Pro receiver in 2016 isn’t doing so because he’s a hater, but because (let’s say) Trent Williams and Cameron Heyward are on the same ballot and they are stanning hard for their local guy or a player with no stats to fall back upon.

But a two-time All-Pro and five-time Pro Bowler who was also one of the NFL’s most incandescent stars and big-play machines is a guaranteed Hall of Famer, right? Nope. I just described Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson.

To reset the bar for this discussion: when three-time All-Pro and six-time Pro Bowler Calvin Johnson was on the ballot two years ago, I interviewed several voters before the committee meeting. Most said something like: He’ll probably make my final five, but I need to hear the argument. I’m not convinced he deserves to be waved to the front of the line. Megatron was indeed a first-ballot suggestion, but you cannot fault voters for wanting to do due diligence before telling Tony Boselli and Sam Mills’ families they would have to wait another year.

Another bar-setter: Steve Smith began his career as an All-Pro return specialist, became an All-Pro receiver (once, with four Pro Bowls), had an amazing 2003 run to what was almost a Super Bowl upset, shared a Comeback Player of the Year award in 2005, became one of the most celebrated tough-guy receivers in history, and is now a popular media personality. Smith could not crack the finalist list in his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility.

Hill has certainly accomplished enough to become a semifinalist, even if he retires tomorrow. Assuming an ordinary late career with the Dolphins — more highlights, maybe another Pro Bowl or two, but a slow decline for a variety of obvious reasons — he’ll hit the ballot at the same time as contemporaries such as DeAndre Hopkins, Davante Adams and Mike Evans. Like Steve Smith, Hill could get crowded out in his first year or two on the ballot.

It’s worth noting here that Hill ranks just 29th among active players in receiving yards. Hopkins, who is already over 10,000 yards, ranks fifth, Evans eighth, and Adams 15th. All three receivers will move up the list in the seasons to come, but so will Stefon Diggs, Cooper Kupp and others. Hill has not played as long as the others but usually doesn’t catch as many passes either, so he’s likely to fall further behind them before catching up. “Black Ink” won’t help Hill if he’s battling a bunch of contemporaries. He will need something more.

Tyreek Hill’s Explosive Plays

Pro Football Hall of Fame voters adore big-play receivers and tend to poo-poo possession guys. That’s an oversimplification, and the committee has changed since the days when Art Monk could barely buy a ticket to get in as a customer, but voters take their cues from the coaches and defenders that they interview about wide receiver candidates. Coaches invariably groan about how dangerous the deep threats were; cornerbacks are more likely to begrudgingly admit that guys was just too darn fast than admit they were beaten for eight short receptions per game by a savvy technician.

Tyreek Hill is often called the most explosive player in the NFL. But does that make him the most dangerous big-play threat? One quick-and-dirty way to measure big plays is to, well, count big plays. Hill has 33 receptions of 40-plus yards in his career so far. Hill has also had two 40-plus-yard rushes and many long returns, but we’re going to stick with receptions for ease of research’s sake. That’s a lot of big plays. Let’s see how it compares to other active receivers:

Let’s put a pin in DeSean for a moment. Davante Adams has 23 career catches of 40-plus yards, Mike Evans 20. So we have a neat statistical separator for Hill: outstanding contemporaries who have played more seasons than him have produced far fewer big plays. Hill should have little problem passing Julio, AB, Hilton, and Green (all of whom are nearly finished producing big plays) before he retires.

Let’s look at Hill in comparison to some Hall of Famers and near-HoFers. The Pro Football Reference/Stathead play finder only dates back to 1994, so we cannot use it to discover how many 40-plus-yard plays Lynn Swann or Flipper Anderson produced, but we can still get an interesting cross-section of recent greats:

That list should add some fuel to Steve Smith’s candidacy: he produced far more huge plays than many recent Hall of Famers, as well as perma-finalists Torry Holt and Reggie Wayne. Hines Ward has been stuck in semifinalist purgatory for years, and that list explains why: Ward is remembered more as a tough-guy leader than a big-play machine, but it would help if his portfolio included a few more big plays. Julian Edelman was included because I’m a compulsive troll.

As for Hill, he will likely finish his career with at least 50 receptions of 40-plus yards, plus a bunch of rushes and returns, That won’t guarantee anything, but it will bolster his argument as the unique big-play threat of the current era.

Now, please forgive a brief digression.

Is DeSean Jackson a Hall of Famer?

Um, no????

Jackson has produced more 40-plus-yard receptions than Terrell Owens and several other Hall of Famers. He’s almost certainly in the all-time top 10 in this category, with deep threats such as James Lofton and Henry Ellard possibly between him and Moss. Lance Allworth might be in there, too, but go back much farther in pro football history and nobody is producing 70 career 40-plus receptions because receivers like Paul Warfield or Bullet Bob Hayes just didn’t catch that many passes.

Jackson is now over 10,000 career yards, has some signature moments as a return man, and possesses many other secondary characteristics of a Hall of Famer. He lacks anything close to an MVP-caliber season or any contributions to truly great teams. Jackson’s career would look different if he had arrived in Philly a few seasons earlier, stayed in Tampa Bay a few years later, was healthy a little more often, etc. As it stands, Jackson belongs in the same category as Joey Galloway or Flipper Anderson, with Henry Ellard and Stanley Morgan a rung above them. Jackson will make a fine Eagles Ring of Honor member.

Is A.J. Green a Hall of Famer?

Green is a seven-time Pro Bowler whose 40-plus-yard reception totals are illuminating. He could still enjoy a significant late-career bump. Otherwise, he’ll join a long list of Bengals wide receivers who had strings of excellent seasons for pretty good teams who never stood out enough to become serious Hall of Fame candidates.

Now Back to Tyreek Hill

If there were any sort of official Pro Football Hall of Fame checklist, Hill would already have checked many of the boxes:

• All-Pro Selections: Two-and-a-half.
• Significant Contributions to a Super Bowl Team: Yep.
• Lots of Playoff Highlights: Yep. And no, playoff lowlights aren’t likely to be remembered.
• Signature Moments: Hill has a highlight reel for the ages.
• “Best at his position” cred: DeAndre Hopkins, Davante Adams, or someone else might be considered the best wide receiver in the NFL in any given season, but as mentioned earlier, Hill is usually placed in his own category as the most “dangerous” player in the league.

Among the unchecked boxes: league leadership in major categories and bulk stats. Hill doesn’t necessarily need much of either of these, but some more 1,000-yard seasons will help him keep pace with his peers.

Hall of Fame portfolios aren’t created by checking boxes, but by building a narrative. In that respect, the next stage of Hill’s career will be crucial. Right now, Hill’s story is intertwined with that of Patrick Mahomes and the rise of the 2018-2021 Chiefs, a team likely to be remembered in the same sense as the Greatest Show on Turf Rams. Will Hill become part of Tua Tagovailoa’s story as well? Will the Dolphins become a perennial playoff team known for holding their own in shootouts with the Bills and Bengals? Or are we about to see a lot of off-target bombs, awkward efforts to force-feed Hill short passes, nagging injuries, and headlines about a quarterback and a superstar receiver struggling to “get on the same page?”

In the former case, Hill likely moves toward “first ballot” territory. In the latter, he’s more like Bruce or Holt, likely to get shunted onto the semifinalist/finalist treadmill for many years, or stuck in a Steve Smith logjam.

That’s what is so tricky about writing about the Pro Football Hall of Fame: you can start with one of the game’s biggest gee-whiz, imagination-capturing performers, someone who most folks would classify as a shoo-in, and just by tugging at their case a little, you end up coming away with a “definitely maybe.”

Frequently Answered Pro Football Hall of Fame Questions

As we kickoff our Hall of Fame arguments series (which is set to run on Mondays throughout June, subject to change if there is breaking news or I get bored), let’s run through some common topics and themes that we covered in last year’s series and throughout my long career of writing about NFL history and the PFHoF.

Every fan has a head-canon Pro Football Hall of Fame

Most fans with an opinion on the subject will assert that they want a “small hall,” so that induction is “truly an honor,” then go on to list about 25 hobby-horse players they think should be in: hometown heroes, famous players from their childhoods, linebackers with tough-guy reputations, Matt Ryan.

The comment thread is a welcome environment for discussing whether you are certain there are too few or too many quarterbacks, whether stats play too large or small a part in induction, whether short-career or long-career players get snubbed too often, and so forth. In the features themselves, I try to focus on the actual procedures and tendencies of the PFHoF and its selection committee.

The bar for the Pro Football Hall of Fame is higher than most fans think

Here’s a partial list of some of the nominees who did NOT make the semifinalist cut for the 2022 class: Randall Cunningham, Boomer Esiason, Steve McNair, Donovan McNabb, Tiki Barber, Chad Johnson, Jimmy Smith, Wes Welker, Dallas Clark, Brent Jones, D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Olin Kreutz, Nick Mangold, Justin Tuck, Kevin Williams, Tedy Bruschi, Charles Tillman, Willie McGinest and London Fletcher.

Most of those players — all of them unbelievably famous and accomplished in their eras, some with eye-popping statistics — will never even reach the finalist stage, let alone the actual PFHoF. Think of what that means when talking about contemporary quarterbacks.

Most folks have no idea how the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection process works

Fans conflate the PFHoF with baseball’s catastrophe, where hundreds of BBWAA cast ballots and then make a cottage industry out of arch, beard-stroking columns on the subject of why they skipped all the best players of a generation. Many of my colleagues, by contrast, have a bad habit of adopting a populist none of them dumb voters know nuttin’ approach to the process, which is convenient for riling up the fan base when Hometown Linebacker gets “snubbed” again.

Many people with strong opinions on the PFHoF don’t even know, for example, that voters must pare the 15 finalists down to 10 with an initial vote (after presentations and deliberation) before paring that 10 down to the final five. I might ask a voter “Didja vote for Hometown Linebacker?” only to be told “I couldn’t, because he did not make the final 10” or “I planned to, but then the case for Surprise Candidate Defensive Tackle was overwhelming.”

The makeup of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, particularly its exclusivity, is defined by the voting process. That process changes slightly every year, and there are some exciting new changes for 2023 that we’ll talk about in a later feature. For now, it’s important to remember that voters aren’t just punching a bunch of holes in a ballot and mailing it from their local brewpub.

Statistics matter in Pro Football Hall of Fame arguments, but not the way you think

Most of the committee isn’t anti-stat, though that may have been true 20 or 30 years ago. Many are rather stat-savvy, but most are “stat-skeptical” in a healthy way. The voters know passing rates have gone up across eras. They know “compiler” years when they see them. Most aren’t ready to fully embrace new metrics like cornerback charting stats, which is appropriate, because those of us who work with such stats regularly aren’t sure how to interpret them just yet.

I have been asked to provide a little analytics for a few Hall of Fame cases over the years, and what the voters have typically asked for is something which illustrates “impact.” Someone building a case for a player might ask, for example, for evidence that a 90-catch or 10-sack season had more impact than the stats show: big plays, hurries, first-down receptions, a historically difficult strength of schedule, whatever. The Tyreek Hill 40-plus-yard reception numbers I provided above are an example of the sort of thing a voter might ask for when assembling a player’s presentation. Such analysis has never formed the backbone of a PFHoF case, however.

Former players/coaches/execs have ENORMOUS sway on Hall of Fame votes

Committee members interview old players and coaches privately, poll them, chit-chat with them on the 18th hole. Old players sometimes cape hard for teammates or (more influentially) top rivals. Bryant Young’s rapid rise to induction was fueled almost entirely by unprecedented support from his peers.

Most fans would probably prefer a PFHoF determined by those who played and coached. Or at least they might think that’s what they prefer. One issue with the current level of old-coach influence, IMO, is that a few guys named William have too much power to make or break candidacies. And if you think that replacing reporters with old players would remove egos and politics, then you have never spoken candidly with an old player.

One quick thought here that should be obvious. “Gold Jacket Joe” makes the talk radio rounds and says things like, “Yeah, of course I think these 10 local heroes from your media market should be Hall of Famers!” He then sits in an Indianapolis bar during the combine and rips all 10 players to every sportswriter who says hello to him. The voters quietly defer to other candidates. Then the local fans scream “how dare they snub our heroes when Gold Jacket Joe says they are all Hall of Famers!” This happens frequently. No one is gonna go on Cincinnati radio and say Ken Anderson isn’t a Hall of Famer, folks. That same old-timer was talking up Tony Boselli on a Florida station last week.

Voters do their best to solicit private opinions and synthesize them. Not to be self-serving, but it’s a job best suited for someone with research chops, sources, a wide perspective, and a functional BS detector. A veteran journalist, in other words.

There is no New York bias

The following players are not Hall of Famers: Tiki Barber, Joe Klecko, Mark Gastineau, Phil Simms, Charlie Conerly, Jessie Armstead, and Mo Lewis. D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Nick Mangold and Justin Tuck did not even reach the semifinalist stage in 2022. It took Kevin Mawae three years as a finalist and two as a semifinalist to get in as an eight-time Pro Bowler for three different teams. Eli Manning might be inducted into the PFHoF, but not because of any New York bias.

Frankly, the moment someone says “New York bias” when discussing the Pro Football Hall of Fame, they reveal that they are so uninformed that it nullifies everything else they may be trying to say.

The whole ‘Terrell Owens’ thing

I wrote thoroughly on this topic a few years ago, with lots of quotes from the voters. Please at least skim it I you are planning an extensive comment-thread debate on T.O.

The whole ‘Matt Ryan’ thing

I wrote about Ryan last year. Nothing has changed. Obviously, if he leads the Colts to a Super Bowl his situation will change. But of course he won’t, because he’s on the decline and the Colts are not very good.

The whole “Eli Manning” thing

Here. It contains many of the talking points I have just discussed.

“Hall of Famer” is becoming a dreary engagement buzzword

Folks love Hall of Fame debates, which is why these articles are written. But there aren’t many real debates or discussions these days. There is, however, plenty of trolling. Name-dropping “Hall of Famer Matt Ryan” or “Hall of Famer Matt Stafford” is a great way to engage Falcons/Colts fans or Lions/Rams fans and enrage their rivals in a headline or tweet; the fact that both statements are barely one notch above ludicrous doesn’t matter. Similarly, @FantasySportsBookWhatever can tweet something like “If Aaron Donald retired today, is he a HoFer?” knowing that they will get hundreds of retweets (free advertising) by informed folks saying “Yes, WTF is wrong with you?” and randos saying, “Overrated.”

I’m not above ginning up fan bases for fun ‘n’ profit — love ya, Titans fans — but I find the laziness of such takes frustrating. One of the joys of studying PFHoF votes and candidacies in more details is learning why Bryant Young gets shunted ahead of Zach Thomas, understanding why Reggie Wayne and Torry Holt get stuck in neutral for years, truly sizing Steve Smith against Andre Johnson and watching voters wrestle with Devin Hester’s candidacy. If some fan wants to talk about “future no-questions-asked first-ballot Hall of Famer Keenan Allen,” that’s great, go be a fan. When a colleague shrugs and figures that sort of thing will draw attention, I would suggest they respect the subject matter and their audience just a bit more.

Tune in next Monday when I set my fandom aside to talk about some recent Philadelphia Eagles Pro Football Hall of Fame candidates. Also: tune in Thursday for a Walkthrough about something happening in the NFL currently.