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GRETZ: Yes for Emmitt; No for Derrick
Feb. 2, 2008
At least there will be one Thomas wearing red and gold that will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August.
Emmitt Thomas was selected as one of the seven person Hall of Fame class for 2008 during voting here Saturday morning.
Derrick Thomas will not be joining him in the Hall of Fame this year. Although he received more support within the voting committee than in any of the previous three years he’s been up for consideration, D.T. did not make the final cut.
That’s not good. What makes it worse are some of the names that got their ticket punched for Canton. More on that later.
Forty members of the Hall’s board of selectors met in a meeting room of the Phoenix Convention Center to discuss and vote on 17 potential members. Two players in that group were designated as seniors candidates, selected by a seniors’ committee of the board. The voting on Emmitt Thomas and Marshall Goldberg was separate from the other 15 players and was a yes or no vote. Thomas earned at least 80 percent votes in the affirmative. Goldberg did not.
The other 15 candidates were discussed at length. They were Derrick Thomas, LB Andre Tippett, LB Randy Gradishar, DE Richard Dent, DE Fred Dean, CB Darrell Green, WR Art Monk, WR Cris Carter, WR Andre Reed, O-Linemen Randall McDaniel, Gary Zimmerman, Russ Grimm and Bob Kuchenberg, punter Ray Guy and former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.
A vote cut that group to 10, eliminating Gradishar, Reed, Grimm, Guy and Tagliabue. Another vote cut the group to five, eliminating Thomas, Dent, Kuchenberg, McDaniel and Carter.
That left a final five of Dean, Green, Monk, Tippett and Zimmerman. A final yes or no vote was held on those five, and all of them joined Emmitt Thomas in the final class.
As one of the voters in that room, there’s only so much that I can tell you about what was discussed; by Hall of Fame rules what is said in that room must stay in that room.
But what I can tell you is this:
 The longest discussion involved Tagliabue. Last year’s the session on the former commissioner lasted just under one hour. This year it was 43 minutes. After Tagliabue, the longest discussions were on receivers Carter and Monk. This was Carter’s first year of eligibility, while Monk has been a finalist for the last eight years. No one spoke a negative word about Derrick Thomas. In fact, one voter said he had changed his mind and would vote for Thomas after watching tape provided to him by the Chiefs organization. His question about D.T. and his credentials centered around how he played against the run. The tape of several games for the 1990s convinced him that Thomas was not a liability in stopping the ground game. Hurting Thomas’ chances more than anything has been a log jam of outside linebackers-defensive end pass rushers that kept splitting the vote. The fact that Dean and Tippett have been inducted and eliminated from that logjam should improve greatly Thomas’ chances of making the Hall of Fame in the next year or two.
But those inductions also provide the biggest disappointment this year for fans of Derrick Thomas; the career numbers of Dean and Tippett do not match those of D.T. over his career:
There was no negative discussion on the qualifications of Emmitt Thomas. While there are only two voting members who actually covered the old American Football League, those voters were in complete support of Thomas. No vote totals released by the Hall of Fame, Emmitt Thomas sailed through the seniors vote.
And what of Derrick Thomas’ Hall of Fame future? With Dean and Tippett out of the way, next year should be the time where D.T. is recognized.
from KC Chiefs.com
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