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Former Ravens, Chargers and Rams safety Eric Weddle announced his retirement on Twitter after 13 seasons in the NFL. With such a long and well-respected career that saw many of his former teammates shower him with compliments upon his announcement, the next immediate question is if Weddle will get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Seemingly every good player ends up being the subject of this debate when they retire and Weddle is certainly no different. But given what we know about the players already in the Hall of Fame, we can take a close look at Weddle’s career to see how it compares to other legends of the sport.
In this case, I took a look at the per-game stats of five other safeties that recently got inducted into the Hall of Fame — Steve Atwater, Brian Dawkins, Kenny Easley, Cliff Harris and Troy Polamalu. Let’s see how Weddle compares:
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I think we’ve got a good spread here to compare against, giving us a better idea of how Weddle will be viewed by voters. Both Polamalu and Dawkins didn’t have to wait very long to get into the Hall of Fame. Harris took more than 40 years and a special blue-ribbon committee to finally don the gold jacket while Easley took 30 years to be enshrined.
As you can see from the chart, Weddle tops four of the five legends in tackles, coming in second to Atwater. However, Weddle falls short in game-changing plays like fumbles and interceptions, which is arguably more important to the voters. He ties Atwater for last place in interceptions while coming definitively in last for both forced fumbles and fumble recoveries. Given the pass-happy era in which Weddle played, you’d expect he would at least rank well in this area against guys who played in the more run-dominated 70s, 80s and 90s.
Looking at Pro Football Reference’s Hall of Fame monitor, Weddle’s 52.88 AV (Approximate Value) score falls well short of the average for defensive backs. Only Dick LeBeau and Emmitt Thomas have lower scores and were still inducted into the Hall of Fame thus far — taking Thomas 30 years and LeBeau 38 years to be enshrined. When combined with how long it took guys like Atwater, Easley and Harris to get into the Hall of Fame, I think it paints a pretty clear picture for Weddle’s chances.
Though Weddle is well respected among his peers, he simply doesn’t have the stats to make a definitive case for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He could still get in at some point but it’s probably going to take quite a while for it to happen. Then again, the voters aren’t robots and a certain amount of bias could come into play to see Weddle get in earlier than his stats and history dictates.
Still, it shouldn’t diminish what was a great career for Weddle. He was well known for his football intelligence and ability to both lead and mentor other defensive players. Even if he never gets into the Hall of Fame, Weddle will be remembered as one of the sport’s best players.
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