http://mmqb.si.com/2015/04/13/troy-polamalu-retires-hall-of-fame-nfl/
Fred Vuich/Sports Illustrated
The Polamalu Problem
The Pro Football Hall of Fame does not have safety in numbers; only one has been elected in the past 26 years. Troy Polamalu’s retirement shines a glaring spotlight on the issue.
By Peter King
This is for all of you, in the wake of Pittsburgh’s Troy Polamalu retiring the other day after 12 seasons, wondering if he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, or whether it’ll be he or Ed Reed who gets into Canton first, or whether they might go in together:
Over the past 26 years, covering 147 enshrinees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame,
oneof the 147 has been a safety. I’m talking a player who played safety his entire career, not one (such as Ronnie Lott or Rod Woodson, both of whom played significant portions of their careers at cornerback) who split time between corner and safety. The one: Minnesota’s Paul Krause, the league’s all-time interceptions leader. There are 295 Hall of Famers, so think of it: 147 is almost exactly half of that, and 26 years is almost half of the time the Hall’s been alive. One safety has been bronzed in that time.
Put another damning way: No safety who has played in an NFL game in the past 35 seasons is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Much to discuss today, including:
- The legacy of the great Polamalu, as seen through the eyes of the man who coached him every day for much of his career, and the quarterback who played him more times than any other passer.
Three things really struck me about Polamalu’s retirement:
1. He’s a unique player in NFL history, a safety/linebacker/cover guy who blew up people, was as instinctive as they come and played with the kind of dignity so few men have consistently shown over long careers.
2. I feel we might be in the midst of a golden age for safeties, with the recently retired Brian Dawkins, Ed Reed and Polamalu leading the way, and so many top-notch ones in their prime now. Earl Thomas, Eric Weddle, Kam Chancellor, Devin McCourty to start with … then the group of new guys who spend part-time doubling as inside linebackers, the way Arizona did last year with much success. Is that a trend that will continue? We’ll see.
But sure tacklers, regardless of size, are playing down in the box with frequency now, and the versatility of so many safeties says to me that more and more coordinators are trying to find their own Polamalus.
3. Regarding the Hall conundrum: Dawkins will be eligible for election in 2017, Reed in 2019, Polamalu in 2020. John Lynch has been a consistent finalist for election recently, but he hasn’t been close yet.
There are five modern-era finalists elected each year, max, and in the next three years, there will be heavy traffic at the doors of Canton. Brett Favre, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, LaDainian Tomlinson, Ray Lewis, Randy Moss, Tony Gonzalez and Brian Urlacher all will have their first years of eligibility in the next four years, so the battle for safeties will only get tougher.
The voters for the Hall of Fame—I am one of 46—stink at electing safeties. We do. Seven pure safeties have been elected in 53 years. It took the voters until Krause’s 14th year of eligibility to elect the man with the most interceptions in history.
Ten NFL all-decade safeties have not been put in, including four of the five on the all-decade first or second teams from the 1980s.
“We have completely disregarded the safety position,” said one of the veteran voters, Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News
. He is fed up with the voting at safety and has a couple ideas how to fix it, which I’ll get to in a few moments.
I bring this up because so many of you, and so many around the league, nodded when Polamalu called it quits Thursday and said or thought, “Hall of Famer. Easy call.” He might be. But it won’t be an easy call if history is the barometer. I would judge the three excellent safeties in this order—Polamalu, Reed, Dawkins—and I think all have good Canton cases. As I say, I think Polamalu was a unique player—so smart, almost predatory at the line of scrimmage, good at matching wits with quarterbacks on pass routes and judging snap-count timing.
You can say he and Reed, and maybe Dawkins, will make it, but now that you know the history, you have to feel a little shaky. Top Dallas safety Cliff Harris was a Hall finalist one time. Kenny Easley and Dick Anderson were one-time Defensive Players of the Year; they never got to be finalists for the Hall. Jake Scott, LeRoy Butler, Darren Woodson, Rodney Harrison and Steve Atwater never have had their cases heard in the room either.
Did Polamalu do enough to pass those men in the pecking order? Probably, but we’ll know more when we see how the cases of Dawkins and Reed are treated. Gosselin’s idea about solving the Canton logjam is an interesting one: When the NFL has its 100th season in 2019, Gosselin suggests the Hall should have an amnesty year, in effect. Elect 10 players from the pool of Senior candidates, the old timers whose cases have been drydocked for years. And elect 10 players from the modern pool.
The one-time 20-man class would certainly clear up a growing logjam. I’m not sure it’s the best idea, but I am in favor of getting a slew of Mick Tingelhoffs considered rather than have them needlessly wait for years, or decades, to hear their names called. Twenty sounds like too many to me, but the concept Gossellin suggests has merit.
Flacco on Polamalu.
Joe Flacco played Polamalu 14 times—11 in the regular season, three in the playoffs. From the first game-planning meeting in his rookie season, 2008, the mantra around the Ravens’ offensive meetings was always the same, according to Flacco: “Know where he is at all times—and not just in the passing game. Watch where he is before running plays, because he was a force against the run. Every time we played them, that’s the first thing we talked about, and we ended up talking about it all week.”
That postseason, Flacco and the Ravens went to Pittsburgh for the AFC Championship Game, and that point got hammered home—brutally, as it turned out for Flacco—in a piece of education Flacco will never forget. With less than five minutes left and the Steelers leading 16-14 in as physical and punishing a game as I’ve covered, Baltimore had a third-and-13. Flacco knew this could be their last chance.
The call was for a two-man route—one on a deep route across the middle to, hopefully, clear out Polamalu and one corner; and one on a 15-yard corner stop, as the Ravens called it, with Derrick Mason running 15 yards and juking the corner on a timing route, knowing the ball could be coming to a small window when he turned and looked for it.
One problem: The Steelers were playing Polamalu at linebacker on the play. He’d be in coverage on ace Baltimore tight end Todd Heap. Except Heap never left the line. He was there to block. So Polamalu was free to be instinctive. That’s a dangerous deal.
“I kept my eyes up the middle, like I was going to the other guy,” Flacco said from his home in New Jersey on Saturday. “Troy was just hanging out. I think he knew what I was thinking. He knew where we wanted to go with it—we wanted to get the first down to extend the drive. I made a bad assumption, that the window would be a little bigger than it was. It wasn’t, because Troy was there.” Lurking.
Flacco threw to Mason, and if Polamalu hadn’t been there,
the video makes it look like the ball might have been good enough for a conversion. Except Polamalu leaped high and snagged the ball two feet over his head. He weaved through traffic for the insurance touchdown, and Heinz Field went nuts. That was it. Pittsburgh 23, Baltimore 14.
“I learned a lot about Troy on that play, honestly,” Flacco said. “In the run game, you’re always going to run away from Troy. But when we were throwing, I’d just always try to throw away from him. You can’t do it all the time, and you can’t let it ruin your game, but there were so many things he did that other safeties just couldn’t do.
There were times in games—he was the only guy I faced who did this—where he’d turn his back to the play and just sprint to a spot on the field where his football instincts told him the ball was going. He’d turn around a couple seconds later when he got close to the spot. Of the guys I played against, Troy was unique. I was lucky, because I got to face Ed every day in practice, and he was very good at baiting you too. But Troy was at the line more.”
Flacco said he’ll have great memories of playing against Polamalu. “Now [that he retired], I’ve got to take a step back and appreciate the games we played against him and the Steelers. I am a man of few words, and so is Troy, but I do know I’ll tell my children and grandchildren I was lucky enough to play in these games, and lucky enough to play against Troy so many times. Troy’s an example of the right way to do things, on the field and off the field. Such a great competitor on every play, and he treats everyone the right way. That’s the right way to handle yourself. The image he had, the example he set … he just did it right.”
“What were your conversations like?” I asked. “You get to know him very well?”
“No,” Flacco said. “I don’t remember him saying much. He let his play do the talking. But I made sure after the games we played to find him, shake his hand and look him in the eye and say, ‘Good game.’ I’ve never really talked to Troy beyond that.”
I closed by asking Flacco if he’d have some good memories of playing Polamalu, of the plays he made on Polamalu—and not just the nightmare in the title game.
Flacco laughed. “The only recollections I have of Troy are bad,” he said. “All bad. So no, I don’t have many good memories of making plays on him.”
It must be the cornball in me. I’ve seen so many of those Steelers-Ravens games, and seen the intensity and the on-field hatred, and it appeals to me that the triggerman of the Baltimore offense is so genuinely respectful of the best man on the other side of the field.
LeBeau on Polamalu.
Dick LeBeau has played and coached in the NFL for the past 56 years. He entered the NFL in 1959 as a defensive back for Detroit, playing opposite Hall of Fame cornerback Night Train Lane, and transitioned to coaching when his playing career was done. He was Polamalu’s defensive coordinator with the Steelers for 11 of his 12 seasons.
This, then, is the money quote from LeBeau when I reached him Sunday:
“Troy is a once-in-a-lifetime player. I have never seen an athlete in the secondary, at any level, do as many things at the absolute highest level as Troy did. He could play linebacker; he played linebacker more than people know. He could go deep with wide receivers in coverage. He could blitz. He was a great tackler. He was an excellent run player. All the raw material you’d want in a defensive back, he had the best.”
“Are you including all the DBs you’ve seen in your life, going back to your playing days?” I asked.
“I do mean to say that,’’ LeBeau said. “Yes I do. I mean to say he has every skill a defensive back would need to play at the highest level, all over the defensive backfield.”
