{"id":253396,"date":"2025-08-01T13:34:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T13:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/253396\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T13:34:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T13:34:15","slug":"my-class-of-2026-modern-era-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/253396\/","title":{"rendered":"My Class of 2026 modern-era predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arizona Cardinals, 2004-2020<\/p>\n<p>You know, if the Chargers had just taken this guy with the No. 1 overall pick in 2004 &#8212; instead of selecting Eli Manning before flipping him for Philip Rivers &#8212; San Diego would have had triplets of Drew Brees, LaDainian Tomlinson and Larry Fitz. And Antonio Gates. Oh, man &#8212; what could have been! Instead, Larry went third overall to Arizona, where he made 11 Pro Bowls and was named All-Pro three times (receiving one first-team honor and two second-team nods). The man twice led the league in receptions (103 in 2005; 107 in 2016) and did the same in receiving touchdowns (12 in 2008; 13 in &#8217;09), while also providing one of the greatest postseason runs ever for a receiver (30 catches for 546 yards and seven touchdowns in the 2008 playoffs). Not to mention, he was the 2016 Walter Payton Man of the Year. The Hall of Fame&#8217;s had a wideout logjam for quite some time, but I expect Larry to jump the line.<\/p>\n<p>I believe Brees and Fitzgerald will be the only first-year eligibles from the player pool to make the cut. Now if you&#8217;re asking me about Bill Belichick, I would certainly add him to the class as a Coach\/Contributor selection. Absolute no-brainer. Then again, Ichiro Suzuki <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/ichiro-suzuki-elected-to-baseball-hall-of-fame-2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">wasn\u2019t a unanimous choice<\/a> for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which makes me want to mistrust all Hall of Fames forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arizona Cardinals, 2004-2020 You know, if the Chargers had just taken this guy with the No. 1 overall&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[90,390,117,260,256,7,345,10858,262,55,6,609],"class_list":{"0":"post-253396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-arizona-cardinals","10":"tag-baltimore-ravens","11":"tag-carolina-panthers","12":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-green-bay-packers","15":"tag-hall-of-fame","16":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","17":"tag-new-orleans-saints","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-no-minute"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114953772580395196","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}