Where Does 2024 Rank among the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Greatest Defensive Classes Ever?
With the likes of Dwight Freeney, Julius Peppers and Patrick Willis, it's certainly up there.
Remarkably, it is already time for the NFL to start playing games again, as the Chicago Bears and Houston Texans are set to face off tonight at 8 p.m. ET in the Hall of Fame Game. I always like watching the HOF Game, if not simply to feel excited that football is back (woooo!) — but if we put aside the novelty of seeing live NFL quasi-action, it doesn’t really offer much else. (Caleb Williams and the Bears’ starters aren’t even going to play, for goodness’ sake.) The far more significant part of the weekend is what happens on Saturday, when the legends of the game get immortalized in the hallowed halls of Canton — cue that epic NFL Films music.
And this year, we’ve got an especially good crop of Hall of Famers. On offense, we’ll get to see longtime Houston Texans receiver (and multi-time NFL yards and receptions leader) Andre Johnson get the call, while special teams will get a rare moment in the sun when Devin Hester (the NFL’s all-time leader in non-offensive TDs) goes in. But defense is where this year’s class really shines.
Between Julius Peppers, Steve McMichael, Patrick Willis, Randy Gradishar and Dwight Freeney, the defensive members of the Class of 2024 combined for 420 total sacks (the most of any HOF class ever by far), 2,866 tackles, 41 interceptions, 32 Pro Bowl appearances and 15 first-team All-Pro nods. Maybe this is my bias speaking, as a fan who really started obsessing over football during the era when most of these guys exceled, but you could build the foundation of a ridiculously dominant front seven with all the defenders being inducted this weekend.
But don’t just take my nostalgia-fueled word for how good this defensive HOF class is. Statistically, this group also measures up against the rest of history’s best. And that’s something we can start to measure using Pro-Football-Reference.com’s Approximate Value (AV) statistic, which puts a single-number value on every player each season.
For each class, we’ll be judging off of both total AV produced across all defensive players and average AV per player, using the geometric mean of both figures to reward both the volume and quality of each class’s stars.
This is important, because some Hall of Fame classes contain a high volume of inductees — see the record-breaking 15-player Class of 2020, the most the Hall ever sent in at once — while others only called a few names, but they were the cream of the crop. (For instance, 1997 just gave us Mike Webster — the third-best C ever — and Mike Haynes — the ninth-best CB ever.)
2024 has a great mix of defensive stars from both perspectives, which lands it in fifth place on the list according to our method:
Nothing may ever top last year’s star-studded class of defenders — seven in total, combining for nearly 900 total AV in their careers — and a few other classes have 2024 beat on sheer quality per inductee. But this year’s group of HOF defenders can stand up to just about any other in Canton’s history.
And it could have been even greater.
While Freeney, McMichael and Peppers had fairly full careers — each played until age 37 or older — the two linebackers of the class both walked away at the top of the game with seemingly more left in the tank. In 1983, Gradishar, at age 31 and reportedly in good health, said he would retire despite there being “no major reason for it”:
“I'd like to make 1983 my last year with the Broncos,” Gradishar said during a news conference Thursday at the Broncos training camp. “No major reason for it. I've just talked about it (and) considered it last year.”
[…]
“I felt, after a lot of talking and prayer, that the Lord allowed me to see it through this far. I'd like to play one more year; I have one more good year in me. If I had any kind of goals, it was to allow me to make the decision when to retire rather than an organization, coach or injury,” he said. “I feel good about making that decision.”
Thirty-two years later, the 30-year-old Willis announced his own retirement with echoes of Gradishar’s reasoning.
"As I stand up here today, it's tough, it's hard, but it's also easy at the same time," Willis said. "I knew there would be a day I'd leave, and I always told myself that I wanted it to be on my terms.
"So here I am today standing before you guys, not as a perfect man, but as an honest man… I have no regrets."
The two men retired at nearly the same age, with almost identical AV totals (108 for Willis; 106 for Gradishar). How much more could they have conceivably tacked on if they hadn’t walked away? Linebackers within +/- 10 AV of Willis through age 29 averaged 34 more AV, which would have brought his total to 142; LBs similar to Gradishar through age 31 averaged 19 more, which would have gotten him to 125. That, in turn, would have elevated the Class of 2024 to third on the list above, with a geometric mean of 306.3.1
Even so, being the fifth-ranked defensive class in the Hall’s history — all while the class’ two linebackers both retired early — is nothing to sneeze at, and it will be something to appreciate when the entire Class of 2024 gets their bronze bust and puts on their fabled gold jackets.
That 229 next to Bruce Smith piqued my interest and sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. 1st overall pick in 1985. Buffalo made the right pick, but get this: the first "skill position" player chosen was Al Toon at 10th and the first QB taken? SECOND round pick Randall Cunningham. My how the NFL draft has changed!