The Pro Football Hall of Fame Wednesday announced 52 candidates for the 2026 Modern-Era Hall of Fame class, and for the second time, New York Giants great Eli Manning will be part of the conversation:
Manning survived the first round of selections that reduced the initial list from 128 to 52 players who will be considered by the full 50-member HOF Selection Committee. The next round will reduce this list to 25 semi-finalists.
Considering that Manning was a finalist last year, one of 12 who were not admitted to the Hall of Fame, it will be a shock if Manning’s candidacy does not survive at least to the semifinal round, where the list will be narrowed to 15 finalists. That announcement will be made in about five weeks. After that, though, things get dicey for several reasons:
In my opinion, the Hall of Fame rules are archaic. There can be no fewer than four and no more than eight players elected every year. A casual perusal of the list of 52 above, though, shows that there is a backlog of great players who have not gotten in. Some of them have been candidates for a long time. Last year the Hall admitted only four, the minimum number allowed. The reason is that the Hall added two other layers of voting in the which the list of finalists was narrowed to 10 and then to seven after discussion by the selection committee, before yet another vote was taken to determine the actual inductees. The HOF says it does this to ensure that the HOF remains “elite.”
Baseball, by comparison, has a simpler process. Once the ballot is created, voting is done by mail, and anyone who gets 75% of the vote is in, with a maximum of 10 inductees per year. That process has its own problems, with some voters feeling that even the greatest players should not get 100% of the vote, others valuing stat accumulation over more intangible evidence of impact, certain positions being favored over others, the PED issue, etc. Compared to the gauntlet that the PFHOF has set up, though, it is very straightforward.
Last year, Eli made the final 10, but it was leaked that his candidacy generated “vigorous discussion” and that he did not even make the cutdown from 10 to seven, much less from seven to the four who were selected.
According to Jordan Raanan:
The biggest obstacle, according to some voters in the room, was that Manning was never really in the discussion as the best player at his position for a chunk of his career. He had Hall of Fame moments — including taking down Bill Belichick and Tom Brady twice on the biggest stage — but not necessarily a Hall of Fame career otherwise.
Other factors that may have come into play were his .500 career record, large number of interceptions, and failure to win a playoff game outside of his two Super Bowl runs (he was 0-4 in those games).
This year, yet another obstacle has been added. Unlike 2025, when Manning was the only QB finalist, this year Drew Brees and Philip Rivers have become eligible. Fans like to throw around the “first ballot Hall of Famer” expression for their favorite player, but Brees really is likely to get in on his first ballot. Brees ranks among the top five quarterbacks ever in several statistical categories. No one, but no one, wanted to play against his teams in the Superdome. Pro Football Reference has a stat called the Hall of Fame Monitor in which they try to estimate who will (not who should) get into the HOF based on their analysis of statistical measures that they feel have the most influence on the voters. Here are their QB HOF Monitor rankings:
Courtesy of Pro Football Reference
Players in bold are in the Hall, the others are still active, not yet eligible, or eligible but not elected. You can see that the stats they feel the Hall values include championships, All-Pro and Pro Bowl selections, years as a starter, weighted Approximate Value (their distillation of in-game stats into one overall measure of sustained productivity), and a variety of specific stats. You can see that Brees is ranked No. 7. He only got one ring, but oen is better that zero in the eyes of the voters, and his 13 Pro Bowls, 80358 yards passing, and 571 TDs make him a virtual lock.
Rivers is a more interesting case. His big “failing” is that he never won a championship, but many people do not blame him for that. Rivers played through a torn ACL in the 2008 AFC Championship against New England (the Patriots team that lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl), which adds some attractiveness to his candidacy. He made 8 Pro Bowls, and his HOF Monitor is second highest among eligible quarterbacks after Brees.
Manning is farther down the list, though not a lot farther. Telling is the fact that his HOF Monitor is about the same as HOFer Kurt Warner…who accumulated his stats in only eight seasons, to Manning’s 14. The odds that the committee will select three QBs this year, out of four to eight total players, is nil. Even two QBs will be a stretch, considering that all-time great wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald is now eligible, along with 2025 finalists such as Steve Smith Sr. and Adam Vintieri. There is also some (reasonable) sentiment among voters to get players in who have been eligible for a long time and are running out of eligibility; for example, Tory Holt has been eligible for 11 years.
Things don’t get easier for Manning next year if he misses this year. In 2027, Ben Roethlisberger becomes eligible, and he is generally regarded as the best of the three “big” QBs to come out of the 2004 draft. I thought Eli’s best window was last year; now, I feel that it may not come until 2028 or later. We’ll see, though. The Hall of Fame voters are nothing if not unpredictable.
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