Russ Grimm Elected Into Hall of Fame Class of 2010

I'll be grillin' hotdogs on the day of his induction in his honor. But I will eat them only once. Here's to you Russ. :food-smil

Namath gets a bad rap, but he's was actually a much better quarterback than a lot of people give him credit for.

The problem is, Namath supporters speak of him like he was better than Tarkenton, better than Starr, better than Staubach, better than Len Dawson, and he simply wasn't in that class.

But in terms of hall of fame standards, Namath takes a really big hit for his quarterback rating being roughly league average for the era instead of in line with the best statistical quarterbacks of all time. Truth is, Namath was a guy who was a standard deviation above the mean in net yards per attempt, which is a hall of fame type inclusive statistic. He fell closer to Cutler on the Cutler-McNabb sack-interception continuum (that I created just now), but that's not a bad or a good thing inherently. It just is. Namath was very deserving of his HoF nod, even if he got it for all the wrong reasons.

Bradshaw, on the other hand, is a slightly above average player who is there primarily for team-related accomplishments. The 70's Steelers really don't have a single offensive player who was a hall of famer in the truest sense. Franco Harris was probably the best player on that unit, and he was a pro bowler each of his first 9 seasons, so that's probably the best argument for a HoFer from that offense, but they did win four rings, so a whole bunch of people associated with them were getting in. Ken Stabler and Ken Anderson only wish they were so lucky.

Jason Lisk essentially makes the same argument I did here for Namath over at the PFR Blog

Pro-football-reference.com blog » Blog Archive » Joe Namath is a legitimate Hall of Fame Quarterback (http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=6003)

It's interesting because the same writer did a similar Vinny Testaverde analysis after I had tried to use Vinny Testaverde's mediocrity to make a point about Brett Favre's greatness...and found that Testaverde was more than a Favre contemporary, but he was actually pretty comparable.

Pro-football-reference.com blog » Blog Archive » Vinny Testaverde was better than you think (http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=5449)

I think he's on to me.

I think he's a bit off on the relative value of raw YPA vs. completion percentage. YPA correlates much better to offensive efficiency than completion percentage does, which is the argument he's making, but I think he's missing this point: quarterbacks with critically high YPAs are almost always playing in great passing offenses that would be just fine with someone else pulling the trigger, and conversely, quarterbacks with really poor YPAs can either be poor players, or just stuck in a really terrible offense.

But high completion percentage quarterbacks, by and large, tend to be good players, and more significantly, low completion percentage quarterbacks are almost always poor players. Namath wasn't bad at completion percentage. He was average at it. But he had additional value because of a quick release that could help keep the chains moving and keep the YPA high in a pretty talented offense.

He's right that having a high completion percentage isn't everything. Brian Griese had a high completion percentage and just mediocre overall numbers. But YPA is even less relevant to a quarterback, as it does basically nothing to separate the player from the offense.

I have Namath at #40 all time, hall-of-fame worthy, but not as high as Lisk does at #24.

Dave Butz.....................................