(EDITOR’S NOTE: To listen to Tony Dungy, click on the following link: Megaphone).
Pro Football Hall-of-Fame voters are so concerned about a gridlock of wide receivers for the Class of 2024 that they’re expected to start clearing it next month when the Hall names five modern-era finalists to Canton. One, maybe two, could be enshrined.
But, then, what about the gridlock of pass rushers?
In case you missed it, the list of 25 semifinalists for the Class of 2024 includes four of them -- Jared Allen, Dwight Freeney, Julius Peppers and Robert Mathis, all of whom are among the NFL’s top 20 in career sacks. Peppers ranks fourth at 160, followed by Allen (136), Freeney (125-1/2) and Mathis (123).
Peppers looks like a first-ballot Hall of Famer waiting to happen, while Allen and Freeney – both finalists this year – are slam dunks to return as finalists. That leaves Mathis, a three-time semifinalist, on the outside looking in, waiting for the traffic jam ahead to clear.
Sound familiar? It should. But, like the wide receivers, the crowd there thin soon.
Peppers is the most Hall-of-Fame worthy. Allen has been a finalist the past three years and was a Top-10 finisher for the Class of 2023, putting him in the on-deck circle for 2024. And then there’s Freeney. He was a 2023 finalist in his first year of eligibility but didn’t get past the first vote reducing 15 candidates to 10.
How and where does he fit in?
“Dwight was a great player,” Hall-of-Fame coach and NBC Sports analyst Tony Dungy said on a recent “Eye Test for Two” podcast.
Now, full disclosure, Dungy, one of 50 voters on the Hall’s board of selectors, coach Freeney at Indianapolis. So he’s not exactly non-partisan. But he saw enough of him in Freeney's rookie season (2002) to know there was something special about the Colts’ first-round draft pick. In eight starts that season Freeney had 13 sacks, a league-best and rookie-record nine forced fumbles and a league-high 20 tackles for loss.
He was also the Defensive Rookie of the Year runner-up … to Julius Peppers.
“You mention those stats,” Dungy said of Freeney, “and he wasn’t even a full-time player. We were kind of working him into the lineup, and I guess I got a little smarter halfway through the year. (I thought) with all these sacks and forced fumbles, maybe I need to play the guy a little bit more.
“He was tremendous, and he was in the perfect situation. We played on AstroTurf. We had the lead a lot. People were going to have to throw against us. That was the reason we selected him, and he certainly validated all of our beliefs. I would be totally behind Dwight as a Hall-of-Fame player.”
If there’s a criticism of Freeney, it’s that he was one-dimensional – an outstanding pass-rush specialist who didn't play the run. Dungy disagreed, and he should know. He coached him for seven years. So when asked if the knock on Freeney was fair, Dungy was immediate with his response.
“No,” he said. “(Rushing the passer) is what we paid him to do, and that’s what we wanted him to do. People didn’t just say, ‘Oh, we’ll just run at Dwight Freeney.’ He was out there the whole time. He did his job in the run game. But he knew for us he was there to do one thing … and that was pressure the passer. And he did that.”
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