The 2004 QB Draft, In a Hall of Fame Sense

Discussing the three QBs in the 2004 NFL Draft, and the various aspects of their HOF candidacies.

Hello everybody! Welcome back to my Sports Passion Project.

Since the NFL playoffs are taking a week off, I figured I could take a week off as well, because all this playoff talk is really beginning to bore me. Everybody knows that I’m a much bigger fan of regular season games, which have much less stakes, and therefore leave room for much more fun.

I acknowledge that I am well-ingrained in the matters of regular season football, which I enjoy much more, with a much lower working-level knowledge of postseason happenings, which I enjoy much less, to give you an indication of the bias that I bring with me into the argument I’ve presented in the title. I want to talk about the 2004 QB Draft, in a Hall of Fame sense, looking deeply into the candidacies of three of its four important figures.

Sorry Matt Schaub. You know I love you, but you’re a bit too small for this debate.

I’m not going to pretend like

Mike Tanier

’s recent post about Eli Manning and the Hall of Fame voting process didn’t inspire me to write this, but it’s not really my style to just come out writing a long-form piece bashing Eli Manning as an unworthy candidate.

Hi Elisha. Do you think you’re a Hall of Fame player?

I’m much more of a positive type than a negative type, so if I had to say negative things about Eli Manning, I wanted to say some positive things about others, which is why I’m bringing two other QBs drafted in the first round in 2004 into this piece also: Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger.

2004 is often thought to be one of the best QB Draft classes of all time, with the four names I’ve mentioned so far (Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Schaub) all having been top ten QBs in the NFL at one point or another. This is not a patch on 1983, which featured John Elway, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason, Ken O’Brien, and Dan Marino, all of whom became top five guys at one point in their careers, but nothing in NFL history comes even close to 1983, so this is no shame.

However, I plan to argue that this 2004 Draft has a lot more good than great, putting it a lot closer to some of the lower mentioned great QB classes (1993, 1998, 2012, etc.) than to the lofty heights of the untouchable 1983, via poking holes in the Hall of Fame candidacies of its top players.

To do this, I’m going to use Bill James’ Keltner questions for Hall of Fame induction as a rough guide. I will not use all 15 of them, because not all 15 are applicable to football, but there are good questions here that will help determine Hall of Fame candidacy in a football context. For each player, I will answer the question, and determine what it means for their case, beginning with the first and most important question of all:

1. Was he ever regarded as the best player in football?

The key word in this question is regarded. Actual statistical performance comes further down the criteria list.

Eli: Don’t make me laugh. If anybody ever told you in the midst of his career that Eli Manning was the best player in football, you would’ve laughed them out of the building. If you were outside, you would’ve laughed them to the next state over.

I have a fairly comprehensive archive of every QB ranking list that’s ever been published on the internet (which I compiled for a web scraping project back when I used to be a computer science student), and the highest I could ever find anybody ranking Eli Manning was fourth, likely a result of the euphoria in the aftermath of his 2011 Super Bowl win.

Even this fourth place ranking is a statistical quirk, generated by Peyton Manning not appearing on most lists, or appearing in an artificially low spot, as a result of his 2011 neck surgery, and not knowing how well he was going to come back in a Denver offence that’d been awful for years. If Peyton was healthy in 2011, he would’ve been above Eli on these post-2011 lists, and there’s a real chance nobody would’ve ever even regarded Eli Manning as a top five player.

That by itself ought to be a damning hit to a Hall of Fame candidacy.

Ben: This one is just as easy to answer, but less easy to laugh out of the building. The answer is a definitive no. Not playing a single season in a career that didn’t feature one or more of a prime Peyton Manning, prime Tom Brady, and prime Patrick Mahomes means that the coveted top player in the league spot is difficult to come by, but he was not comically far away like Eli Manning was.

Ben was very underrated while putting up very solid statistical seasons in 2004 and 2005, and fell into not getting recognition that he didn’t deserve anyway from 2006 onwards, but when his stats began coming back up in the 2010s, he was deservedly viewed as a top five guy on multiple different lists in multiple different seasons, particularly his career high of third after a really QB-weak 2017 season.

While Ben was never regarded as the very top guy in the game, he was regarded as one who could pick up the pieces should something happen to the top guys, which is exactly the fashion in which he won both of his Super Bowl trophies. Given football Hall of Fame standards, and how low they can often be for this position, this is a good start for Ben.

Philip: The key word here is regarded.

This is an iffy one to try to answer, but the near-unanimous retrospective acknowledgement that the 2009 MVP was stolen from him to give to Peyton Manning I think amounts to a recognition that Philip was the best QB in the league that year. That would make this, at least retrospectively, a yes as an answer to the top level question.

I’m out on a limb with this one, because contemporaneously Philip was never viewed as the best. There is a reason that 2009 MVP was stolen from him in the first place. His highest ranking on any one of my compiled lists is multiple second places after 2013 (a down Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers season) behind Peyton Manning.

This is much like a Josh Allen argument. Perhaps Philip was never viewed as the best player in the game, but he was viewed as the second top dog behind only Peyton Manning multiple times, particularly after 2008, 2009, and 2013, with solid arguments for first places. He never actually got those first places at the time, but we’ve all realised in the years since that he truly was the best in 2009, which is only once, but once is more than Ben or Eli ever got.

Ben and Eli never even got into an argument for the top spot in the league. Philip Rivers did. That’s a great start, putting some distance between him and his two counterparts.

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From here, the Keltner questions advance to number 2: was he the best player on his team? This is not really applicable to football, since positions have such disparate values. In short, Ben and Philip were almost always the most valuable players on their teams. Eli not so much, but that’s just because he provided negative value a lot.

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3. Was he ever the best player in football?

This is the same question as presented in question one, but free from the constraints of the word ‘regarded.’ This leaves me free to discuss statistical performance, regardless of opinions of the time.

Eli: Once again, you’re being pretty funny asking me if Eli was ever the best player in football. His career best EPA/Play in a season is 0.186 in 2009. His best CPOE in a season is 2.5 in 2010. He was never top five in either category. The closest he ever came to being at the top of the league was finishing seventh in EPA/Play in 2011, on a healthy 662 play sample, good enough to put him in my top five QBs for that year, but once again it’s only fifth, and once again, that season did not feature Peyton Manning. If Peyton had been there, it’s entirely likely that Eli would’ve finished a whole career with no top five statistical finishes.

If we take the five year stretch from 2007 to 2011 as the stretch everybody remembers Eli for, at no point during this five year stretch did Eli generate as much EPA/Play as 2004 Draft classmate Matt Schaub, and only twice was he as accurate. If you can’t even beat Matt Schaub in the exact same offensive environment, how do you expect me to take you seriously as a Hall of Fame candidate?

Yikes. Eli is not off to a good start.

Ben: Much like Ben’s answer to question one, the answer to the top level question is a definitive no, but this is no Eli Manning.

While Ben never led the league in any QB production category, he did finish in the top five in EPA/Play five times (2005, 2007, 2014, 2015, 2018), plus two sixth place finishes in 2010 and 2016, with the second place finish en route to winning the Super Bowl in 2005 being the clear frontrunner here. There are seasons where Ben’s 2005 EPA/Play of 0.28 flat would’ve led the NFL, including one as recent as 2021. Peyton Manning’s 2003-2006 reign of terror ensured that 2005 was not one of those seasons, but in certain years that could’ve put Ben at the very top.

Accuracy is much the same story. While Ben never led the NFL in CPOE either, he did finish in the top five in 2007, 2009, 2014, and 2015, with 2014 and 2015 being second places. There are also seasons where Ben’s career high CPOE of 6.5 would’ve led the NFL, including both 2023 and 2022 as recent examples.

The key point is that while Ben Roethlisberger was never the best QB in any season in his era, there were seasons where he could’ve been. He could just never get his timing right.

Philip: This is where it feels very good to be freed from the restraints of the word regarded.

Philip Rivers was absolutely the best QB in the NFL, multiple different years. Most obvious is the MVP robbery in 2009, where Philip led the league with his 0.338 EPA/Play and finished second with his 6.6 CPOE, but there are others too. In 2008, Philip also led the league in EPA/Play while finishing second in CPOE, not winning MVP because his team finished 8-8 that season.

LOL Chargers.

I would argue for Philip in the 2010 season as well, finishing second in EPA/Play and second in CPOE, with much better peripheral numbers than the EPA/Play leader, and league MVP, Tom Brady. Philip failed to win the MVP again in 2010, because his team went 9-7 and missed the playoffs.

LOL Chargers.

In this 2008-2010 stretch, MVP voters seemed to turn on and off whether individual results mattered or whether team performance mattered like a light switch, typically in whatever fashion did not benefit Philip Rivers. I don’t respect MVP voters, so I view Philip as the best QB in the league for three seasons in a row, from 2008-2010. Outside of these three seasons, he never led the league in EPA/Play again, but did finish in the top five three times more (2013, 2017, 2018), while finishing in the top five in CPOE three more times in 2011, 2013, and 2014, with that 2013 season being his one time leading the league.

In short, while Eli Manning never got close to the number one spot, and Ben did but never actually reached it, Philip got there several times statistically, and could’ve gotten one more in 2013 if not for that pesky 2013 Peyton Manning season. People who look back and don’t remember Philip being on this level, I implore you to look at the statistics again. The AFC truly had a big three from 2008-2010, not just a Brady-Manning binary.

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4. Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

To retrofit this question to football, I’m going to amend it to whether players had impact on first round bye races.

Eli: Given the formulation of this question, the answer is a definitive no.

The Giants got kind of close in one of Eli’s better seasons in 2005, finishing tied for second in the NFC with the Chicago Bears, but it’s a bit of a mirage. The Giants finished there only because Chicago rested starters in the final game that year. While New York was in the fight in December, a negative EPA game from Eli is what took them out of that fight. I could consider this impact, but the Eli fans in the audience really ought to wish I don’t.

From then onwards, the Giants would get one more chance at a first round bye (in 2008), which they converted, but never get close again. ‘A number’ of seeding races is subjective in this context, but I’m willing to say that two in a whole career, one of which Eli botched quite badly, falls short of that benchmark.

Ben: Finally I can answer a question about Ben in the affirmative.

The Steelers were all over the races for the first round byes throughout Ben’s career. They did not always win them, but they won more than enough to get me to give him a yes on this one.

Ben’s performance in the game against the Patriots in the 2004 regular season game was crucial in ensuring the Steelers got to play the eventual playoff game between the two at home, even though they did not win it. Pittsburgh again walked away with a first round bye in the 2008 season, albeit without much help from Ben in the two Baltimore games that secured that position for them.

Pittsburgh was also deep in the fight for a conference bye in 2010 (winning), 2011 (losing), and 2017 (winning). This makes five in the whole of Ben’s career, but once again. For a man who had to share the same conference with prime Peyton Manning, prime Tom Brady, prime Philip Rivers (more on him later), and prime Patrick Mahomes, five real chances at a first round bye, with four of them being converted, is pretty good. I like Ben on this one.

Philip: Philip shares the exact same circumstances in the exact same conference as Ben does, but spent a whole career routinely stuck on worse teams than Ben was on.

The Chargers were unstoppable in 2006 and 2009, bulldozing their way to a first round bye each time without much difficulty, but they had no chance after starting 1-3 in 2007 and 3-5 in 2008, and truthfully had no chance at going to the top of the league for a decade after that.

The only other real chance Philip had with a championship level team was in 2018, and he did fight Patrick Mahomes to a draw in a late-season game on the road in Kansas City in a 29-28 win to take the division lead, which is no lean feat, but it’s a forgotten feat, since the Chargers lost the very next week, surrendering the 2018 bye back to the Chiefs.

That makes three real chances at a first round bye in Philip’s entire NFL career, only two of which he actually got, meaning he comes up a little bit short in this criteria.

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5. Was he a good enough player that he could play regularly after passing his prime?

This is a tough question to answer for football QBs, whose prime never truly ends, but I’ll try my best.

Eli: This is debatable.

I argue the last season of prime Eli Manning was in 2015, where he put up a solid 0.1 EPA/Play flat. He did play for a while after that, but the question is whether he should’ve. This is like keeping a once great hitter as a DH in baseball, well after his days of providing positive value are behind him. Think Albert Pujols in Anaheim. He did play, but the Angels likely would’ve been a better team if he didn’t. Does that mean the answer to this question is yes? Or is it no?

Much like Albert in Anaheim, post-2015 Eli was not unplayable. He was just verging on unplayable. There’s no way in the modern NFL that if a man was playing as badly as Eli played from 2015-2019 that he would’ve stayed in the league for so long. Ryan Tannehill never even posted a negative CPOE before he got booted out of the league.

In short, he did survive for several years past his prime in his era, but he wouldn’t have in the modern era. As for answering the question, I’ll call it a push.

Ben: Another push.

Ben’s prime was ended by an injury suffered in the second game of the 2019 season, hot off one of his best seasons in 2018. He came back for 2020 and 2021, but he was not the same player. The Steelers had no alternative, so they did use him, but it’s another Ryan Howard in Philadelphia or Albert Pujols in Anaheim situation. He did hang on for a few years, but not for performance reasons. Is that a yes in the parameters of this question, or is it a no? You can come up with your own interpretation, but it’s not too extreme in either direction.

Philip: Yes. Absolutely yes.

Philip’s prime, in terms of performance, never ended. If you remember, the Colts were shocked that he retired given how well he played. The Colts’ lack of preparation for this retirement is the action that set off the QB spiral in which they remain to this day. If his prime had ever ended, nobody would’ve been surprised by his retirement, but after one out of the norm season in 2016 which made everybody think things were winding down, Philip came out and finished in the top five in EPA/Play twice more after that, and generated a ridiculous 0.212 in his final season, which is the best for a player’s final season in the play tracking era, and one of the best final seasons for any QB ever.

As far as playing into old age goes, few players have ever done it better than Philip Rivers.

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6. Is he the best player in football history not in the Hall of Fame?

Eli: In terms of career EPA/Play, there are more than 50 people better. In terms of stats that go further back than 1999, there are probably 75+ people better than Eli statistically.

In the football discourse, it normally goes that the word ‘great/greatest’ applies to team accomplishments. The word ‘good/best’ applies to individual accomplishments. Considering this question uses the word ‘best,’ it’s not even close. There are 75+ players better than Eli, and only 26 Hall of Fame QBs. You do the math.

If we’re talking about greatest players left out of the Hall, Eli may have a case, but greatest is easier to achieve than best, and I like tougher criteria, so I’m ruling against Eli again.

Ben: Once again, the answer is absolutely not, but there are not that many non-HoF players at this position I would take in front of him.

Being real though, there are people we need to prioritise over Ben Roethlisberger for Hall of Fame status, on the sheer strength of statistical superiority. If we’re strictly using the word ‘best,’ Ben ranks 57th on my all-time QB ranking, meaning there are plenty of QBs better than him that could use the help. However, this Hall of Fame tends to use a mix of good and great as its criteria, so if I cross all the QBs that never made the Super Bowl off the list, here are the retired players that I would personally prioritise over Ben, in order of lowest to highest on my priority list:

Matt Ryan, Joe Theismann, John Hadl (who won an AFL Championship), Billy Kilmer, Boomer Esiason, Rich Gannon, Ken Anderson.

The first four are perhaps arguable, but the final three are absolute non-starters. If Ben Roethlisberger gets into the Hall of Fame before any of Boomer Esiason, Rich Gannon (now that Kurt Warner blew the lid off, making having only four great seasons an okay thing for a Hall of Famer), or Ken Anderson, it will begin to tax the credibility of the institution. Using the relatively new Kurt Warner precedent, that it’s okay to not have very many prime seasons, Ben has no statistical argument at all over any of these three, and in my opinion loses his statistical argument against Ryan, Theismann, Hadl, and Kilmer.

In short, the Hall has created a lot of problems for itself by inducting Kurt Warner. This has opened up the floodgates for people like me to argue on behalf of a lot of statistically superior players who were previously left out for not doing it long enough. This really hurts players like Ben Roethlisberger, whose main strongpoint is his longevity, in an argument like this.

Philip: You guys aren’t going to believe this, but I think the answer is actually yes.

Once again acknowledging that we’re talking about better, not greater, what better player than Philip Rivers is currently eligible, yet not in the Hall of Fame? Relative to their position, long-time Colts C Jeff Saturday probably has the best argument for the best player not to be in the Hall of Fame, but relative to the league as a whole, where QBs have outsized value compared to any other position, what player is better than Philip Rivers, but not in the Hall of Fame?

In my opinion, it comes down to a three-way race, between Philip Rivers, Jim Everett, and Bert Jones. Some may laugh at me for invoking the name of Bert Jones, because his prime was only three seasons long, but once again, Kurt Warner’s was only four, so stop laughing. Statistically, I have these guys almost right on top of each other.

All three have been held out for the same reason, despite clearly being top QBs of their eras. Bert Jones led some fantastic 1970s Colts teams, but only started two playoff games in an era the postseason was much harder to qualify for, and never won one. Jim Everett is one of only two QBs to defeat the 1989 SF 49ers, with the other being the Majik Man (hey

Peter Merrill

. How you doing?), but unfortunately ran into those same 49ers again in the 1989 NFC Championship game, ending the only playoff run he ever went on, and Philip Rivers also only got as far as the AFC Championship one time.

Nevertheless, all three of these men were top five in multiple statistical categories multiple times, including multiple seasons leading the league. They’re basically three men standing alone on an island (with Trent Green as their sidekick) as QBs who were good enough to lead the league in statistical categories of importance, yet never found circumstances good enough to find their way into the Super Bowl game.

Football reference thinks that Jim Everett’s best career comparison (taking into account his seven prime years) is John Elway. It thinks Philip’s best comparison (using his ten years of true peak) is Drew Brees. Do these not sound like Hall of Famers to you?

This article is not about Jim Everett, but despite his total lack of any team success, he deserves a Hall of Fame induction. So does Philip Rivers, on the exact same grounds. There are good stats, bad team guys, and then there are guys who are the amongst the 20 best players of all time, who happened to spend their careers on bad teams. To me, both Jim Everett and Philip Rivers are in the latter category. On those grounds, they’re deserving Hall of Famers to me. I won’t say which is the best player who isn’t in the Hall of Fame, because they’re almost impossible to statistically separate from each other, but I will definitively declare that it’s one of the two.

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7. Are most players with comparable career statistics in the Hall of Fame?

Eli: This depends if we take championships won to be a player statistic. In terms of QB statistics, the answer is a clear no. The names immediately surrounding him on my all-time QB ranking are Ron Jaworski, Lynn Dickey, Cam Newton, and Donovan McNabb. None of these men are going to the Hall of Fame.

Then again, Eli is one of just 13 QBs with multiple Super Bowl championships to his name, but the fact that Eli is so definitively worse statistically than most of his 12 peers in this category makes this an interesting case. However, the Hall of Fame voters have been presented with a case like this once before, in the form of Jim Plunkett.

Jim won Super Bowls 15 and 18 as the QB of an Oakland Raiders squad that was the underdog in each of those games. Much like the case of Eli Manning, a large part of the reason the Raiders were underdogs was the QB disparity created by having to lug around Jim Plunkett. I have nothing against Jim, but he was just not in the top 15 QBs in the NFL for either of those Super Bowl seasons, and as such, he is not in the Hall of Fame.

Eli Manning is not as bad as Jim Plunkett, but he is very far below each of the other 11 multiple time champion QBs. I believe he’s far enough below that we can invoke the Jim Plunkett precedent, and vote no in this case. I also believe that if Eli Manning makes the Hall of Fame, Jim Plunkett becomes a clear snub that the Hall must deal with, because clearly we’re letting in everybody with multiple championships at that point.

Ben: This is a lot like Eli, in the sense that there are very few careers that chart the path that Ben’s did. Of the 13 QBs that won multiple Super Bowls, Jim Plunkett is the clear 13th best. Eli Manning is the clear 12th best, and Ben Roethlisberger is the clear 11th best.

I would be tempted to invoke the Jim Plunkett precedent again in my answer to this question, but Ben Roethlisberger is not nearly as bad as Eli Manning or Jim Plunkett. The issue is that he’s also not nearly as good as the next best post-merger two time champion, John Elway. Quite frankly, I don’t know if there is a player with comparable career statistics to Ben Roethlisberger.

On my all-time QB ranking, the names that show up around Ben’s are those of Danny White, Jared Goff, Carson Palmer, and Steve McNair. These all feel like Hall of very good types to me. Will the fact that Ben is a multiple-time champion lift this Hall of very good career into the Hall of Fame?

It’s tough to tell. Playoff success did lift Hall of very good player Jim Kelly into the Hall of Fame. However, it did not lift Hall of very good player Doug Williams. As far as actually answering the question, I think it’s a push. Hall of very good players can make the Hall of Fame with sustained playoff success, but do not always. Ben is going to have to hang on the committee being nice to him, like they were to Jim Kelly.

Philip: I basically answered this one in the last question. The most similar players career-wise to Philip Rivers statistically are Drew Brees and Tom Brady. On that basis, he will make the Hall of Fame. However, when you combine those all-time great individual statistics with very little winning, you get a player comparison to Jim Everett, who should be in the Hall of Fame, but isn’t.

I’m going to have to say no on this one. Despite being the best QB in the NFL statistically for three seasons in a row (2008-2010), which would make Philip the only non-HoF player who could say that, I remember what this process did to Jim Everett, and his lack of team wins. If this process is still as team-win oriented as it used to be, Philip will not make it, on Jim Everett grounds, but Ben Roethlisberger will, on Jim Kelly grounds, despite everybody knowing (both contemporaneously and in retrospect) that Philip Rivers was a better player than Ben Roethlisberger, and that Jim Everett was a better player than Jim Kelly.

This is how voting processes can warp things sometimes, when who is the better player is not the only thing up for discussion. Eight is a skippable question that doesn’t apply to football, so we skip to question nine.

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9. Is there significant evidence to suggest that he was significantly better/worse than suggested by the statistics?

This was always going to be the big one wasn’t it? Upon hearing that sentence, here come the team win sympathizers to say that if great players don’t win they aren’t great after all. Here is my opinion.

Eli: I hate to keep bearing bad news, but there is no evidence that Eli was ever better than his numbers suggest. It may even be the opposite. In one of his best (results-based) seasons in 2005, his 44.9% success rate translating into 0.098 EPA/Play suggests that he was out over his skis, and that the offence falling apart entirely come playoff time likely could’ve been predicted.

2006 was exactly the opposite, with likely a better individual season translating to worse results. 2007 was exactly where it should’ve been given his peripherals, and so on. There are a few seasons where I would’ve expected his results to be better, looking at the surrounding data (i.e. 2008), and a few where I would’ve expected worse ( for example, 2011), but nothing where I would’ve written an article attempting to change the narrative around how well he did or did not play, due to ludicrous luck, in the fashion I did for Kirk Cousins this season.

By the way, Eli Manning’s career regular season EPA/Play from 2016 (the year of his last playoff appearance) and prior is 0.056. His career postseason EPA/Play is 0.112. The exact doubling is weird, but adding 0.056 EPA/Play to one’s regular season total for the postseason is neither unprecedented nor even particularly uncommon, so his postseason performance is not indicative of a fantastic player hiding under the surface any more than Nick Foles’ is. I don’t think we’re putting Nick Foles in the Hall of Fame.

Moving along.

Ben: Ben’s results in his early seasons (2004 and 2005) were probably a bit big for his britches, which is why it doesn’t surprise me very much that he didn’t end up in the top five in EPA/Play again until 2014. His numbers likely overstate his true performance level in 2010 as well in my opinion, as that period’s Ben Roethlisberger was never going to sustain a 1.3% INT rate.

Turnover luck swings both ways though, so Ben spends most of the rest of his career doing a yo-yo act between being very good at avoiding turnovers and being merely okay at avoiding them.

If I have to put a bow on it, I think Ben’s stats probably overrate him just a tad, almost entirely focused in the 2004-2010 years. From there, Ben’s turnover luck generally balances out, and his performance becomes a lot more stable throughout the 2010s. Stable at a very high level I might add, and I don’t think those stats are out of the ordinary at all.

I don’t think a slight bit of stat stuffing is enough to harm Ben’s case too much, but despite finishing second in the league in EPA/Play in 2005, was he the second best QB that year? Probably not. His fifth place ranking in success rate is probably more indicative of where he was as a player, and that’s the type of overrating we’re talking about here. Nothing too bad, just slight things.

Philip: This is truly the centralising question of this entire piece.

Is there evidence to believe that Philip Rivers is worse than his stats, which are all-time great?

In 2006, yes there is. His success rate is worse than the post-concussion version of Trent Green, but a very lucky turnover rate, amongst a fantastic Chargers roster, helps him to put up very good stats that year. In 2007, he is quite bad by his standards and his numbers say he’s quite bad by his standards. It’s a shame this is the only season he made the AFC Championship game. Onto 2008, the season where Philip leads the NFL in EPA/Play the first time. Is there reason to believe his stats are overrating him?

No. I don’t think so.

Leading the NFL with his 52.4% success rate, in addition to his second place CPOE, gives me no reason to believe this performance wasn’t indicative of his true level. His team won just eight games because of a 23rd ranked defence, plus a 2-7 record in one possession games. What do you want Philip to do about that?

2009 is a slightly different story, as despite his 0.338 EPA/Play leading the league by quite a bit, Philip finishes only fifth in success rate, likely indicating a small individual step backwards, despite the massive increase in results, due to an unsustainable (for Philip Rivers) 1.9% INT rate. This does not change the fact that he was a deserving MVP that year, and the fact that I can construe a 0.338 EPA/Play season as a slight step backwards is perhaps the best compliment that I can give to a player. Let’s continue.

In 2010, Philip finishes second in success rate, third in CPOE, and second in EPA/Play, in a season where his ability was almost exactly captured by his statistics in my opinion. This is the end of the top of the league Philip Rivers years, and from here he trades back and forth mostly evenly between his statistics underrating his true abilities (2011, 2013, 2015, 2019 in a huge way), overrating his true abilities (2016, 2017, 2018, 2020), and properly rating them (2012, 2014).

On the whole, I think Philip Rivers’ stats properly capture his ability level (wherever it may have been that season) in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014. I think they underrate his ability level in 2011, 2013, 2015, and especially 2019, where he got hit with extraordinarily bad turnover luck. I think they slightly overrate his abilities in 2006, 2009, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020.

This is nine seasons where Philip is either equal or better than his stats, in my opinion, compared to six where he is overrated by them. I go into this level of detail only because there are people who will go to their graves insisting that Philip Rivers’ statistics overrate him, but I just don’t see it. His late career surge from 2016-2020 was probably a bit of a mirage upon further review, but other than that five year span, I think in 2009 Philip was a top five QB who rode a wave of turnover luck to being the deserving MVP that year, and I think 2006 Philip was not quite ready yet, but those 2006 Chargers carried him along, and that’s all the overrating Philip’s stats do.

I can’t see it in any other season.

Do I see there being any evidence to believe Philip is better or worse than his statistics? It comes in periods. From 2016-2020 he was probably slightly worse than his statistics indicate. From 2011-2015 he was probably slightly better, but the bread and butter of this argument is that in the three seasons in a row where my fancy statistics view Philip as being the best QB in the NFL (2008-2010), only once (2009) are those statistics out of line in any way, and he’s still a top five QB in 2009. He’d be far from the first top five QB to masquerade as the best due to a wave of turnover luck. Steve DeBerg in 1990 and John Elway in 1993 spring to mind as examples of the exact same phenomenon.

In short, the answer to the top-level question is no. I don’t believe Philip’s stats over or underrate him. Take a little off 2016-2020, put a little on 2011-2015, and we likely end up in the same place we’re at right now. No matter how much the anti-Philip crowd wants to say this is incorrect, his statistics are real as far as I’m concerned.

Question ten is also skippable, so we move to number 11.

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11. How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win the MVP?

As far as an ‘MVP-type’ season, I’m going to go with the worst possible MVP, which (in my opinion) is when Cam Newton won in 2015 despite generating just 0.171 EPA/Play on just a 0.1 CPOE, on the strength of his team’s defence carrying them to a 15 win season. To discern what an ‘MVP-type’ season is for the QB position, I’m going to ask the question of whether the man in question would’ve won MVP if his team won 13+ games, and his numbers change none.

Eli: There is one season where Eli put up better numbers than 2015 Cam Newton, which was his 2011. If his Giants had the best defence in football in 2011, I think there’s a solid chance Eli could’ve won MVP that year. I know this sounds like a ridiculous argument for newcomers, but this is what MVP voting is in football. It’s got to do with the whole team, so despite not getting a single MVP vote in his entire career, some of that blame must fall on the Giants for being so poorly run, and only giving Eli a top five defence twice (2010, 2016).

Still, are we going to put a man in the Hall of Fame who never got an MVP vote? Not even one vote. I talked earlier about how this man was never regarded as the best QB in the NFL, but neither was Cam Newton, and Cam won an MVP award. I can’t say this reflects well on Eli as a Hall of Fame candidate, but let’s see what the other men do before I make any conclusions.

Ben: This is another weird corner case to try to navigate in the career of Ben Roethlisberger. He never got a single MVP vote in his entire career either, but in terms of ‘MVP-type’ seasons, they are not plentiful, but they do exist.

He generated 0.215 EPA/Play on a 15 win team in 2004, much better numbers than when Cam won on the strength of a team with the same number of wins, but 2004 Peyton Manning existing took any chance of winning MVP away. Ben also generated 0.181 EPA/Play on a 2.9 CPOE in 2017 on a 13 win team, numbers that could’ve won MVP if the best QB in the NFL was named Brock Purdy that year (I’m looking at you, 2023 Lamar Jackson).

Ben also had a season that would put him in the top half of all QB MVP seasons, generating 0.24 EPA/Play on a 5.5 CPOE in the 2014 season, but a 26th ranked defence and an 11 win team as a result ensured that it was never going to happen.

Ben’s MVP arguments often came down to his inability to start every game, something that he dealt with throughout most of his career. MVP voters (rightfully in my opinion) place a premium on starting every game in a season when casting their ballots, and Ben was able to start as many as 15 games just 11 times in his 17 years, which cuts down on a lot of his chances.

As far as seasons where Ben started enough games, and had numbers that could have won MVP had his team won at least 13 games, there are only two. 2014, and 2018, both of which are cut off at the knees by untenable defences and poor team records. In sum, Ben never won MVP. He never got an MVP vote, but had circumstances gone right, in either 2014 or 2018 he could’ve.

Philip: Here we get to the point where the stolen 2009 MVP really matters.

Unlike Eli and Ben, Philip got MVP votes. He got them twice, in both 2008 and 2009, and created uproar when he did not win the award in 2009, uproar that has only gotten stronger in the years since. He never got another vote after that, because he was never on another great team after that, but the fact that there were MVP voters that thought Philip deserved the goods in two consecutive seasons puts him on an entirely different tier than the other two players in this comparison.

As far as seasons that could have won MVP, given 2015 Cam Newton circumstances, there are six of them. Not one like Eli. Not two like Ben. Six. 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2017, and 2018 all could’ve been MVP years had Philip been blessed with the best defence in football behind him.

On one of these occasions, Philip was actually on a 13 win team, in the 2009 Chargers. 0.338 EPA/Play on a 6.6 CPOE on a 13 win team, but failing to win the MVP, is tied with Brock Purdy in second place for the biggest MVP robbery of the new millennium, behind only Cam Newton ahead of Carson Palmer in 2015, so while Philip never did literally win an MVP, in some people’s minds he actually did, and in even more people’s minds he should’ve.

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This is the end of the Keltner questions that are truly applicable to football. Note that Bill James includes nothing about the playoffs in his baseball Hall of Fame criteria, because back when he wrote it, it was easy for a player to go a whole career without making the postseason. The same is not true in football, so let’s include a standard of playoff performance in here.

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12. Was he a great playoff player?

Eli: Meh.

I know a lot of people’s heads have just exploded. What do you mean meh?

There’s this narrative that’s out there that Eli Manning morphed into some kind of monster when playoff time came around, but I told you before that his playoff EPA/Play was 0.112. That’s dramatically lower than Aaron Rodgers’.

Aaron Rodgers is not an all-time great playoff player. I just got done talking about that. This means that, to me, Eli Manning is not a great playoff player. Let me tell you why.

His playoff career begins in 2005, where his -0.6 EPA/Play that day is one of the worst playoff performances out of any player ever, and is the reason his team loses. Then comes 2006, where Eli plays fine, but loses to a Philadelphia team quarterbacked by Jeff Garcia.

From here we move to 2007, where he plays great in the first two rounds against Tampa and Dallas, but really mediocre in the final two against Green Bay and New England, coming really close to one of the biggest chokes in history in the 2007 Super Bowl, at the head of a Giant team that was clearly superior on that day. A real QB would’ve won that Super Bowl by 20 points with a defence playing so well. Eli won it by three. Not exactly all-time stuff.

From here we move to 2008, where Eli’s -0.42 EPA/Play is the reason his team loses. He then doesn’t make the playoffs again until 2011, where he has an all-time great first two rounds against Atlanta and Green Bay, but requires one of the luckiest escapes in history to get out of SF alive, and wins by four points in the Super Bowl over a Patriot team missing their best offensive player (2011 Rob Gronkowski). There is one further playoff game in 2016, where his negative EPA/Play is again the reason his team loses.

In all, Eli Manning singlehandedly cost the Giants three seasons (2005, 2008, 2016), did nothing to help as they lost in 2006, and played very well in spurts but by no means through the whole playoff runs in 2007 or 2011.

This is a good playoff player, but horrendous blow ups in half of his total playoff appearances preclude Eli from having a status any better than good, in my opinion. Others can disagree on this, but I’m not sure I’d pick Eli as a playoff performer over either of his two classmates.

Ben: Another guy who isn’t as good in the playoffs as you may think he is.

Ben’s playoff career begins in 2004, where he struggles mightily against both the Jets and Patriots. In one of these games, Ben’s defence bails him out. In the other it doesn’t, which is why the 15 win 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers are not champions.

2005 goes dramatically better, beginning with one of the best playoff games any QB has ever had against the Bengals, which for some reason gets buried under the memory of the Carson Palmer injury, which doesn’t matter at all, because nobody was beating Ben Roethlisberger generating 1.00 EPA/Play flat. In the second round he outplays Peyton Manning. In the third round he outplays the permanent obstacle. In the Super Bowl he struggles quite badly, but so did Eli Manning, and nobody seems to criticize him for it.

In 2007 Ben plays okay, doing nothing special as the Steelers go one and done. 2008 is quite similar, playing very well against Philip Rivers in the first game, but struggling against Baltimore in the AFC Championship, and struggling for a lot of the Super Bowl too, before the one great drive at the end bails it all out.

Pittsburgh doesn’t make the playoffs in 2009, but in 2010 go all the way to the Super Bowl again, with this probably landing in the middle of the three SB runs. Not as good as 2005, but better than 2008. Ben does play badly in the Super Bowl though, something that was a trend in his career, and from here, things take a turn.

2011 is an embarrassing loss, as Ben can generate just 1.1 total EPA against one of the worst defences in football in the 2011 Denver Broncos. The Steelers don’t play in the playoffs again until 2014, where Ben is horrendous, posting -0.15 EPA/Play against a Baltimore defence that wasn’t that good. 2015 would’ve been a one and done loss if not for Vontaze Burfict trying to murder Antonio Brown. Nothing special there.

Ben leaned on his rush game a lot in the 2016 playoffs. As soon as that quit working, the Steelers quit working. The 2017 playoffs matched him up against one of the best defences of all time in the 2017 Jaguars. That’s not exactly a fair fight, even though Ben individually did put up 0.3 EPA/Play against it. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it is Ben’s final playoff performance worthy of note. There are two more. One in 2020, and one in 2021, but Ben generates approximately 0 EPA/Play in both, doing very little to influence the final outcome either way.

It’s an odd playoff career, in that it started slow, picked up, and then went back to not being great again after 2010. On the whole though, I think Ben generally handled himself well in playoff settings, especially in the 2005-2010 time period.

Philip: What do you want me to say about playoff Philip Rivers, other than that ridiculousness abounds?

I’ve talked about the 2006 AFC Divisional game before, in the context of it being one of Tom Brady’s luckiest playoff escapes, with the Chargers making it across midfield but failing to score not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, not five times, not six times, but seven times in a game they lost by three points. This would never happen again in a million years. If we simulated this game 1000 times, the one we got in real life is likely among the worst five, but I suppose the QB still must take some blame for it. This was pretty bad.

This moves us to 2007, the worst regular season of Philip’s career, but where he carries his team in the postseason, specifically in the second round, where he generates 0.96 EPA/Play in a stunning victory over the Indianapolis Colts, one of the best playoff games by any player ever. Unfortunately, he tears his ACL in this game. He tries to play on it in the AFC Championship, but is horrendous. I won’t hold that against him too much. He shouldn’t have played, but it’s not his fault that his team let him. It’s just a shame that 2007 was clearly shaping up to be the Philip Rivers playoff run that everybody would remember, but it got cut short on him.

2008 is where Philip finally finds his form as a regular season player, but he struggles in the postseason, posting just 0.02 EPA/Play as the Chargers beat the Colts, and a much better 0.25 against the Steelers, but just gets outdone by a much better team. 2009 sees Philip run into one of the best defences of all time in the 2009 New York Jets. If I can’t fault Ben for it, I won’t fault Philip for it.

This takes us all the way to 2013, where Philip is fantastic in the wild card round, and pretty darn good against Denver too, but is team is overmatched, so he loses. The Chargers will not make the playoffs again until 2018, where Philip is just okay in the wild card round, but does nothing to mess it up as the Baltimore Ravens defeat themselves, and he plays pretty darn good against New England too, but his team is overmatched, so he loses.

The final Philip Rivers playoff moment is in 2020, where he outplays Josh Allen 14.8 total EPA to 13.1, but his team is overmatched, so he loses.

People meme on Philip a lot for losing in the playoffs, but do you know how many playoff games he lost that his team was favoured to win?

Two. That’s better than Eli Manning’s score.

Do you know how many games his team won where they weren’t favoured to win?

Four.

Those two games where his team lost are actually two out of only three times Philip Rivers was ever favoured to win a playoff game. People complain about how much he lost, but according to the gambling public, his record should’ve been 3-9. His actual record was 5-7.

These are not just slight moneyline favourites either. When Philip lost in 2007, he lost as a 14 point underdog, one week after winning in Indianapolis as a 10.5 point underdog. When he lost in 2008, he lost as a 6.5 point underdog, which is a very healthy playoff spread. Eight point underdogs in 2013. Just four point underdogs in 2018, but a full seven points again in 2020.

This is what people lose in the Philip Rivers narrative. He was routinely being asked not just to win as an underdog, but to pull off some of the biggest upsets in NFL history. Such was the talent level on the rosters he was frequently playing on. Sure, 2006 and 2009 hurt, but we can take pot shots at anybody. Look at the Patriots for instance. 2007 hurts, 2010 hurts, and 2012 hurts. They lost as the favourites more often than Philip did.

It’s not Philip Rivers’ fault that the Chargers were never real contenders in the AFC after 2009. They don’t build those buildings in Vegas for nothing. They did not install those betting lines so heavily against his teams because they wanted to clown on Philip Rivers. They did it because he (except 2006 and 2009) was on an overmatched roster.

Philip Rivers in 2008 generated 0.25 EPA/Play as a 6.5 point underdog in Pittsburgh, and lost. Eli Manning in 2007 generated 0.19 EPA/Play as a 7.5 point underdog in Green Bay, and won. Does that make Eli a better playoff player than Philip?

Not in my book it doesn’t.

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I think this concludes our analysis of each of these players side by side. I answered eight of Bill James’ Keltner questions, plus invented one of my own, for a total of nine different questions related to the Hall of Fame candidacy of the 2004 QB draftees.

Out of these nine questions, Eli Manning got six no’s, two pushes, and just one answer in the affirmative. Ben Roethlisberger got three yeses, two pushes, and four no’s, mostly due to being an outlier in NFL history, not being an entirely undeserving two time champion like Eli Manning or Jim Plunkett, but not being a wholly deserving one either like Peyton Manning. Philip Rivers got five yeses, two no’s, and two pushes.

At least on the grounds of the Keltner criteria, this is enough to count Eli Manning out of Hall of Fame consideration in my opinion. He was never regarded as the best player in the game. He never had great stats. His teams were not at the top of the league very often. He played past his prime, but did not play well. He would not be the most egregious example of a QB left out of the Hall of Fame. The only player in NFL history with comparable career statistics (Jim Plunkett) is not in the Hall of Fame. There is no evidence to say Eli is over or underrated by his regular season stats, but his playoff performance is overrated.

Eli Manning is the Madison Bumgarner of football. We enjoy all of the postseason memories, but we also must acknowledge (like we did with Jim Plunkett all those years ago) that the Hall of Fame is for great players. It is not for people who played like Eli Manning. If seasons like 2011 could’ve been more prevalent, he could’ve had a real argument here, but while 2011 was magical, it happened only once. Once is not good enough. Not for this level.

Ben Roethlisberger’s three yeses, two pushes, and four no’s reveal him as the borderline candidate he’s likely to end up becoming once he’s eligible to be voted on. He was never the best QB in the league. He never had best QB in the league level stats (although he did get close a few times). His teams were at the top of the league enough to make him a known name. He did generate 0.122 EPA/Play in a season after his prime ended, which was enough to get him a push from me in that category. It could turn to a yes if you really wanted it to.

There really are no QBs with both two championships and comparable career statistics to Ben Roethlisberger, which is why the comparable statistics category gets a push out of me. I do think Ben’s statistics overrate him just a little bit, specifically in the seasons before the 2010s, but in the 2010s he did have a few seasons that could’ve won MVP in different circumstances, and there was a stretch of time where I would describe him as a great playoff player.

That moves us to Jim Evere… Sorry, I mean Philip Rivers. The two are just so similar I can’t tell them apart sometimes. His five yeses, two pushes, and two no’s on the Keltner criteria indicate that this is a player who would likely make the baseball Hall of Fame, but this is the football Hall of Fame. Will he make it here?

Philip was never contemporaneously regarded as the best player in the game, but retrospectively is commonly acknowledged as the NFL’s best player in 2009, in addition to modern statistics really liking his 2008 and 2010 as well. His teams were not frequently at the top of the league, but Philip individually was good enough to keep them at an above-baseline performance level for a long time, even after his prime had ended.

I do believe that if Philip Rivers were left out, he would immediately jump the queue to become first in line of glaring Hall of Fame omissions. His career statistics according to football reference are most comparable to Tom Brady and Drew Brees, who are both locks, but it can’t see the lack of playoff winning, which is what led me to the frequent invocation of Jim Everett’s name throughout this piece, a player who is not in Canton.

I don’t believe Philip was overrated to any great degree by his statistics, and he had plenty of seasons that could have won him an MVP award, plus one that absolutely should’ve won him one. He was not a great playoff player, but he played very well in playoff games a lot, and could’ve won some championships with some better rosters.

Will the Hall of Fame voters take all of this into account for Philip? It’s hard to say, but there is one thing I believe they will take into account.

Every season in post-merger NFL history, the Hall of Fame has always taken care to ensure that there were at least five Hall of Fame QBs active during that season. It can get as low as five. It can get as high as eight, but it’s always at least five.

Pick any season you want. It can be 1975, which featured passes thrown by Len Dawson, Terry Bradshaw, Dan Fouts, Bob Griese, Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, Roger Staubach, and Fran Tarkenton (eight players). It can be 1995, which features passes thrown by Troy Aikman, John Elway, Brett Favre, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Warren Moon, and Steve Young (seven players).

The only exception to the ‘at least five players’ rule is the inexplicable omission of Ken Anderson keeping the 1980-1982 stretch from having five HoF QBs in the league. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe the weakness of these three seasons after Staubach and Tarkenton, but before the 1983 Draft, did a great deal of work to get Ken Stabler into the Hall of Fame, so there could at least be four Hall of Famers active in this time period.

This brings me into the relatively recent stretch of QB play we’ve gone through in 2016 and 2017, after Peyton Manning, but before Mahomes and Allen. This period has three locks: Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers. In addition, it has ‘we’ll see’ Matt Ryan, ‘we’ll see’ Dak Prescott (who is on a Hall of Fame statistical pace but has just had a bad season. It doesn’t take many bad seasons to fall off HoF statistical pace), ‘we’ll see’ Russell Wilson, and ‘almost certainly not, but things can change’ Jared Goff.

Add those seven players into the pool with the three 2004 Draft QBs, and we have a ten player pool, from which we can select (at most) eight Hall of Famers. Not all ten can make it. We just can’t have it that a third of the league had a Hall of Fame QB, in two seasons that were widely thought to be weak.

Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers are going to the Hall no matter what. That leaves us with Philip Rivers, Dak Prescott, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan, Ben Roethlisberger, Jared Goff, and Eli Manning, a pool of seven players, from which at the very most five can be selected, but in a more realistic sense only four can be selected.

Based on the Kelter criteria, we can pretty safely knock Eli Manning off, so this leaves six names and four spots, and what do you do from there? Rivers, Ryan, Prescott, Goff, and even to a degree Russell Wilson all face this perceived ‘lack of postseason success’ problem, so even that doesn’t do enough to narrow it down. Goff and Prescott have time to change their fates in this regard, but the others do not.

Statistically speaking, Philip Rivers is far out ahead of this group, with his total of being the best QB in the league three times alone defeating the combined total of the rest of the group, which is once (Matt Ryan 2016). In my opinion, this is enough to put him in the Hall of Fame, because the Hall of Fame voters have a long history of ensuring that somebody has to go. The 2016 and 2017 seasons have to get to five active Hall of Fame QBs. Nobody is not an option. You may say this is silly, but it’s a Hall of Fame voting process. Of course it’s silly.

This leaves Ben Roethlisberger to fend for himself in a group featuring himself, Matt Ryan, Russell Wilson, Dak Prescott, and Jared Goff. Statistically, Ben cannot match any of these players, but those two championships carry so much weight. This is why I was saying he’s a borderline candidate. Out of this group of five, either two or three will make it, and I think that’s the key decider for me. Does Ben Roethlisberger have to beat out one of Matt Ryan or Russell Wilson, both statistically superior players, or does he have the luxury of only having to beat out Dak Prescott and Jared Goff, who are both also statistically superior players, but less so.

It’s tough to call. It’s times like this that I’m glad I’m not a Hall of Fame voter. Matt Ryan is entirely superior in the regular season to Ben Roethlisberger, roughly the same individual player in the postseason, but his teams won no championships, compared to Ben’s two and getting really close to a third. Who wins that comparison? If this were such an individualist sport like baseball, it would be Matt Ryan all day and all night, but this is not baseball. This is football, and I don’t know who I would vote for.

The same goes for Russell Wilson, with basically the same arguments. The 2016 and 2017 seasons can theoretically get to six active HoF QBs without the help of Ben Roethlisberger. The question becomes whether the Hall of Fame voters are going to let this climb to seven by inducting Ben Roethlisberger, or whether he’s going to have to beat out one of those two guys to become one of the six.

In sum, this article has helped me solidify my position on two of the players. Is Eli Manning a Hall of famer, yes or no? No. I don’t think so. Is Philip Rivers a Hall of Famer, yes or no? Yes. I think due to his success on the Keltner criteria, in addition to the fact that the 2016 and 2017 seasons need Hall of Famers, and he’s head and shoulders above all the other options in those years statistically, cements the fact that he’s a Hall of Famer to me.

What to say about Ben Roethlisberger?

Is he a Hall of Famer, yes or no?

I don’t know if I can answer that, even after all this analysis. He was never the best player in the league, but he got close. However, on a consistent basis he was not as good as Matt Ryan or Russell Wilson in the regular season, and fights them to a draw in the playoffs, but his team were multiple time champions, and their teams were not.

It’s a really borderline candidacy to me. As I said during the ‘best not to make it’ section, if Ben were to miss the Hall of Fame, he would not be the most glaring miss. If he failed to gain induction, I would continue advocating for Boomer Esiason, Rich Gannon, and Ken Anderson ahead of him, but just because he would not be the very most glaring miss in football history doesn’t make him unworthy of the Hall of Fame.

It’s easier just to be a big Hall guy and just say yes. Of course put Ben Roethlisberger in, but that would amount to quite the lowering of the Hall of Fame standard. I have Ben as basically the same (relative to his league) regular season player as Joe Ferguson. Do we want to put Joe Ferguson with two championships in the Hall of Fame?

It’s reasonable to either answer yes or answer no to that question, which is why I’m just going to leave it there. Make your own interpretations as it relates to Ben Roethlisberger’s Hall of Fame candidacy. Let me know what you think in the comments if you care to talk about the Ben Roethlisberger vote.

Many people think Philip Rivers and Eli Manning are both borderline Hall of Fame candidates, meanwhile Ben Roethlisberger is a practical lock. That could be true, but when performing this exercise using objective criteria, that flips around. Philip Rivers becomes the most deserving candidate of the three to make the Hall of Fame. Eli Manning drops off the ballot in year one and never gets presented again, and Ben Roethlisberger becomes a subject of debate for years and years and years.

Hall of Fame voting is anything but objective, so this objective analysis is doomed to mean very little, but I hope I’ve at least taught you something about the 2004 QB Draft, and the legacies of the players involved, in a Hall of Fame context.

Also, can we please start petitioning the Hall to induct Jim Everett?

Thanks so much for reading.