Not a huge favorite on this board, but Thomas is a sneaky HOF candidate. He was highly favored by the Associated Press, with one of the most severe splits in terms of AP first-team All-Pro selections to other first-team All-Pro selections (He was a five-time first-team All-Pro according to the Associated Press, and a two-time second-team All-Pro by them; he only made one other all-pro or all-conference team by another major publication, a 1st-team all-conference nod from Pro Football Weekly.)
But considering the popularity of the AP honors and the overlap between the AP voters and the HOF, I think Thomas has a great shot at the Hall.
Every linebacker with 5 NFL first-team All-Pro votes is in the HOF except for Thomas, Ray Lewis, Junior Seau and Chuck Howley. Howley, in addition to being in a golden era for linebackers and having to fight with a bunch of other Cowboys for spots, is also a bad example because he was an outside linebacker, a position that's been significantly overlooked by the Canton voters.
Thomas led some fantastic defenses in Miami, played at an elite level for awhile, and has the necessary individual honors. He also wasn't playing on stacked defenses, at least compared to some of the best linebackers in history. I wrote
this article about **** Butkus and compared the number of defensive Pro Bowlers at the other ten defensive positions for the linebackers below during their prime seasons:
Code:
5.00 Jack Lambert4.06 Willie Lanier3.38 Ray Nitschke3.38 Joe Schmidt3.31 Nick Buoniconti3.06 Bill George2.75 Ray Lewis2.75 Mike Singletary2.63 Sam Huff2.25 Zach Thomas1.94 Brian Urlacher1.00 **** Butkus
That's another mark in his favor, IMO, when you look at how good some of those Miami defenses were. And as far as MLB competition goes, there's obviously Ray Lewis, but outside of Brian Urlacher, little else. The best inside linebackers of the last 15 years after the big three are probably Farrior, Fletcher, Bruschi, Trotter, Edwards, Brooking, Wilson, Nickerson, etc. I don't know if all three star MLBs will make the HOF (Lewis is an obvious candidate, so Urlacher and Thomas might end up fighting for just one spot) but all stand out to me as having solid HOF credentials (or in Urlacher's case, will by the time he retires).
