My 2027 NFL Hall of Fame ballot has four names on it, and one of them is going to make some of you close the tab.
Rob Gronkowski, Ben Roethlisberger, Adrian Peterson, Andrew Whitworth.
Before you get to the part where you yell at me, understand what these guys are walking into. Per Darin Gantt of panthers.com, Terrell Suggs, Marshal Yanda and Willie Anderson were the next three names behind this year’s class. Not “in the conversation.” Next in line. They got told to sit down, and now they come back as automatic finalists next year, right as three of the biggest names of the last 20 years walk in the door at the same time.
Only five modern era guys can get in per year. That’s the whole squeeze.
Gronk and AP aren’t the argument, so let’s not pretend
Gronkowski won four Super Bowls, made four first team All Pros, and made the 2010s All Decade Team while being the best blocking tight end in the sport at the same time he was catching 17 touchdowns in a season. There is no case against him. My favorite part is that he only lands in 2027 because he unretired to go play with Brady in Tampa, which restarted his eligibility clock. The man delayed his own Hall of Fame induction to go win another ring. Unbelievable.
Adrian Peterson ran for 2,097 yards in 2012 and he is the last non quarterback to win MVP. That was 14 years ago. He also still holds the single game rushing record at 296 yards, won a rushing title at 30, and put up a 1,000 yard season at 33.
He does have an October 2025 arrest sitting there and some voters absolutely weigh that stuff. I don’t think it keeps him out. I think it makes his vote count closer than it should be, which is its own kind of insult to a guy with those numbers.
Ben Roethlisberger is first ballot and Eli Manning is the proof
Here’s where people get weird. There’s a real crowd that wants Ben to wait a year “out of respect for the process,” which is the most made up sentence in football.
64,088 passing yards, seventh all time. 418 touchdowns, ninth. Two Super Bowls, and he’s the youngest starting quarterback to ever win one. Most 500 yard passing games in NFL history with four. The only quarterback ever to throw six touchdowns in back to back games.
Eli Manning has 57,023 yards and four Pro Bowls to Ben’s six, and Eli is the one who has been standing in the hallway getting told no. If Eli is the bar for “great quarterback who has to wait,” Ben cleared that bar by about 7,000 yards.
And I know somebody’s typing it right now. Yes, Frank Gore is third all time in rushing and got passed over on his first try. Yes, Jason Witten got passed over too. Quarterbacks don’t get treated like running backs and tight ends and everybody reading this knows it.
The Andrew Whitworth Hall of Fame case is not going to be won on Pro Bowls
Alright. Here’s the one you came for.
Four Pro Bowls. Two first team All Pros. That’s the resume, and I’m not going to sit here and tell you it beats Marshal Yanda, who went to EIGHT Pro Bowls, or Willie Anderson, who is the only right tackle with three straight first team All Pro nods since the 1970s. Both of those guys are already waiting. If you want to say I’m jumping Whitworth over two better resumes, you’re right, and I’m doing it on purpose.
Because here’s what the resume doesn’t show you.
16 seasons, 239 games, 235 starts. He was drafted 55th overall by Cincinnati in 2006 and gave them 10 years. Then Cincinnati decided he was done at 35 and let him walk to the Rams.
He became the first 40 year old to ever start a game at left tackle. Three days before Super Bowl LVI he won Walter Payton Man of the Year for donating $20,000 after every single home game to get families in Los Angeles into housing, plus repairing homes back in Louisiana after Hurricane Ida. Then he went out three days later and beat the Cincinnati Bengals 23 to 20 for his first ring, and retired a month after that.
He is the oldest offensive tackle to ever play in a Super Bowl. He beat the team that let him go, in the game that ended his career, in the same week the league handed him its most prestigious award.
You want to tell me Yanda’s Pro Bowl count is bigger? It is! I’m telling you that if the Hall of Fame is a museum of the best football stories ever told, that man goes in the front room. If the Hall of Fame is a spreadsheet, then fine, put in the guy with the higher number and let me know how the speech goes.
The Killer B’s are all on this ballot at the exact same time
Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell all become eligible on the same day. Think about that for a second. That’s an entire offense from one of the scariest teams of the 2010s hitting the ballot together, and their outcomes could not be more different.
Ben walks in. Brown, from 2013 to 2018, averaged 114 catches for 1,525 yards and 11 touchdowns a season, led the league in receptions and receiving yards twice, and then torched every bridge he ever built and walked off a field shirtless in the middle of a game. Bell had three Pro Bowls and two All Pro nods in his first five years and then sat out an entire season over a contract and never got the career back.
One goes in. One might never. One already talked himself out of the conversation. Same locker room.
Somebody great is getting robbed on the 2027 NFL Hall of Fame ballot
Add it up. Gronk, AP, Ben, Whitworth from the new class. Suggs with the most tackles for loss in NFL history and a Defensive Player of the Year, plus Yanda, Willie Anderson, Gore, Witten, Belichick and Eli.
10 guys, five spots, maybe fewer.
Terrell Suggs is going to get left out AGAIN, and he has a resume that walks in easy in about eight of the last ten years. The man just had the bad luck of retiring near the wrong guys.
So that’s my four. Gronk, Ben, AP, Whitworth, and I’ll take the heat on the last one.
