Former Cincinnati Bengals defensive tackle Geno Atkins is one of the best players to ever wear a striped helmet. After spending his entire 11-year career in Cincinnati, Atkins is now eligible for enshrinement in the NFL Hall of Fame. Atkins is eligible for the first time, as he last played in 2020, and players must be five years removed from their playing days to be qualified for induction.<\/p>\n
In his career, Atkins racked up 75.5 sacks from the defensive tackle position and is widely considered one of the most underrated defensive tackles of his time. His small stature didn\u2019t stop his raw power as he consistently pushed pockets and took quarterbacks to the ground at a high rate for his position.<\/p>\n
Atkins is on the initial 128-man list of eligible inductees, and that list will be narrowed down by voters in the coming months. If Atkins doesn\u2019t make it this time, he will surely find his way to Canton someday.<\/p>\n
If he were to become a finalist, he would join former Bengals offensive tackle Willie Anderson, who is an automatic finalist this year.<\/p>\n
Atkins is joined by QB Drew Brees, DT Jurrell Casey, LB Thomas Davis, G David DeCastro, WR Larry Fitzgerald, RB Frank Gore, RB LeSean McCoy, TE Greg Olsen, C Maurkice Pouncey, QB Philip Rivers, QB Alex Smith, and TE Jason Witten as the modern-era players eligible.<\/p>\n
The Bengals don\u2019t have nearly enough representation in Canton, and hopefully, that changes soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Cincinnati Bengals defensive tackle Geno Atkins is one of the best players to ever wear a striped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[228,227,256,68603,1561,2296,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-395309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-bengals","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","11":"tag-cincinnati-bengals-history","12":"tag-cincinnati-bengals-news","13":"tag-cincinnatibengals","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115263815474821680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395309","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=395309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}