With QBs that have retired in the last 5 years, there are some interesting HOF debates that I see coming up. Right now the sure-fire HOF guys are Brady, Brees, and Rodgers when he retires. The next tier, however, is a lot more interesting. You have Matt Ryan, Big Ben, and Rivers who are all very close. What's interesting is that according to Pro Football Reference's HOF Monitor, they all have fairly similar scores even though they have different resumes. Ryan has the MVP/All-Pro 1 season which is pretty much required unless you have 2 Super Bowls. Ben doesn't have a crazy MVP season, but he does have those 2 Super Bowls and 17 good years. Then Rivers has some crazy counting stats. I think that Ryan and Roethlisberger have a slight edge over Rivers but it is very hard to separate the 3. So my question is do we think any of them make it? If they do it opens up the debate for a lot of players in the future. Also, how do we think the HOF committee weighs Rings/MVPS/All-Pro teams? The media is always so focused on the rings but looking at the resumes of HOF QBs there are a lot more without rings than there are without All-Pro seasons.
Edit: Here is the PFR Monitor. The average HOF QB has a score of 108. Ryan has a score of 106, Ben has a score of 100, and Rivers is at 98.
I don’t think Ben, Ryan, or Rivers make it in. Brees only makes it in because his trailblazing the path to 80,000 yards being so much higher than the next person (excluding Brady). Brees makes it in even without the Super Bowl win because his contribution to NFL history with the 80k yards.
Two Super Bowl wins isn’t enough to get you in anymore because Eli is going to miss with the two biggest wins in Super Bowl history so Ben is out. Ryan and Rivers have zero Super Bowl wins, and did not attain any significant regular season or post season records or hit any huge QB milestones or really advance the game at their position so they are also out.
Being completely realistic, Rodgers is the only other guy I see going to HOF because he has 4 MVPs and his TD:INT ratio is so damned insane that he really impacted what we consider a top QB should be like. His ratio is above 4.5 after 18 seasons, the next highest is Mahomes at 3.67 who only has 7 years. The next two seasoned QBs are Russell Wilson with 3.18 with 150 less TDs then Tom Brady at 3.06.
Mahomes is on the right track, but he needs to keep playing for at least another decade at the same level he’s been playing at with the same level of success to really get into the conversation seriously.