A member of the Minnesota Vikings who should be in the Hall of Fame, and likely will be there someday, is going to have to wait at least another year.<\/p>\n
At tonight\u2019s NFL Honors ceremony, the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced its Class of 2026, and former Vikings defensive tackle Kevin Williams fell short of being inducted as a part of this year\u2019s class. It was Williams\u2019 sixth year of eligibility, but just the first time he made it onto the list of fifteen finalists. Most folks, including myself, thought it might have been a bit of a long shot for him to make it this time around, but we were still holding out hope anyway.<\/p>\n
Of the five players who were selected for induction in this year\u2019s class, two of them have ties to the Vikings. One of them is running back Roger Craig, who is most well-known for his time with the San Francisco 49ers, but did spend the final two years of his career in purple in 1992 and 1993. The other was one of two men who made it on their first try in this year\u2019s class, that being wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald never actually played for the Vikings. . .he spent his entire career with the Arizona Cardinals. . .but as I\u2019m sure almost everybody knows, he\u2019s a native of Minneapolis and was a ballboy for the Vikings during his time living in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n
The other three players selected for induction were San Diego Chargers\/New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (also a first-ballot selection), Carolina Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly, and New England Patriots\/Indianapolis Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri.<\/p>\n
This means that Williams will have to wait at least one more year for his chance to be enshrined in Canton. Next year is going to be a bit tricky, as there are a lot of big names that will be hitting the ballot for the first time. Most notable among them is Williams\u2019 former teammate with the Vikings, running back Adrian Peterson, who probably should be a first-ballot lock, but we\u2019ll have to see how that goes. Other players who will make their debut on the ballot for potential induction in 2027 include Ben Roethlisberger, Rob Gronkowski, Cam Newton, Richard Sherman, and Andrew Whitworth, among others.<\/p>\n
There won\u2019t be a Hall of Fame speech coming from Kevin Williams this August, folks, as he didn\u2019t get quite the number of votes necessary to make it into the Class of 2026. He\u2019ll eventually get in, and here\u2019s hoping it happens sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A member of the Minnesota Vikings who should be in the Hall of Fame, and likely will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,233,259,1312,2529,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-732838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-vikings","11":"tag-minnesota-vikings-news","12":"tag-minnesotavikings","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116022411630094287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732838","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=732838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}