New rules are coming to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Eli Manning’s case is suddenly getting a fresh round of attention.
The Hall announced Friday that it is changing the voting process in a major way, cutting the selection committee from 50 voters to 28. Hall of Fame president and CEO Jim Porter said the goal is to head off “unintended biases,” a phrase that lands with extra weight after Bill Belichick’s surprising snub in the most recent cycle.
“We believe these changes both augment what has worked well while addressing opportunities to further strengthen a tradition that means so much to the game and everyone who loves it,” Porter said.
The first-year group for the upcoming cycle includes Adrian Peterson, Ben Roethlisberger, and Rob Gronkowski, though off-field issues could affect Peterson and Roethlisberger when the votes are cast.
As for Manning, the rule changes do not alter the real debate around his Hall of Fame candidacy. His résumé is still his résumé. The question remains whether two Super Bowl rings are enough to get him into Canton, and that argument has always split opinion.
From a pure football standpoint, the case is not clean. There are no advanced numbers here to tilt the discussion the way they sometimes do in baseball, and the article’s view is that Roethlisberger is the more deserving quarterback on the field alone. The only player described as a “lock” for next year is Gronkowski.
That said, Manning has become one of those names that people have largely settled on already. If the rings were not part of the story, he would be remembered as a steady but unspectacular starter.
He never won a postseason game outside of the two Super Bowl runs, and the Giants made the playoffs only once in his final seven seasons as a full-time starter. The 2019 season is excluded from that count because Pat Shurmur benched him after only two games.
The bigger question, of course, is what the Hall is supposed to mean. A gold jacket and bronze bust in Canton should carry real weight. Otherwise, the line between greatness and simply being good starts to blur.
For now, the new setup gives everyone a chance to see where the Hall is headed. But the sense here is that Manning is still a long shot to get in anytime soon.
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