\n There aren’t too many first-year locks in the 2027 class.<\/p>\n
Next year’s class of first-year eligible players is strong, but it should leave space.<\/p>\n
At the top of next year’s class are tight end Rob Gronkowski, running back Adrian Peterson, cornerback Richard Sherman and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Who are locks?<\/p>\n
Gronkowski is a four-time Super Bowl winner, but his 9,286 career receiving yards rank sixth all-time among tight ends and far behind Witten (13,046), who is still waiting for his Hall call. “Gronk” was a five-time Pro Bowler while Witten went to 11.<\/p>\n
Peterson’s 14,918 career rushing yards are ranked fifth all-time. He was the MVP in 2012, when he came up just short of breaking Eric Dickerson’s record for most rushing yards in a single season. However, Gore ranks third in all-time rushing yards and is still waiting.<\/p>\n
Sherman was a lock-down cornerback in the “Legion of Doom” for a long stretch, but he has five Pro Bowls and one Super Bowl on his resume. Woodson was also a five-time Pro Bowler, a three-time Super Bowl champion, and is still waiting.<\/p>\n
Is Roethlisberger far ahead of Manning? Roethlisberger was a two-time Super Bowl winner, just like Manning. Roethlisberger has six Pro Bowls to Manning’s four. Roethlisberger ranks seventh all-time in passing yards (64,088) to Manning’s 11th (57,023).<\/p>\n
Suggs and Roethlisberger going into the Hall of Fame in the same class would be poetry. A maximum of five modern-era finalists can be selected for enshrinement each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There aren’t too many first-year locks in the 2027 class. Next year’s class of first-year eligible players is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052],"tags":[184,117,2282,7,781,891,20472,20125,6,169,1049,10915],"class_list":["post-735697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baltimore-ravens","tag-baltimore","tag-baltimore-ravens","tag-baltimoreravens","tag-football","tag-general","tag-homepage-latest-headlines","tag-inline-news","tag-marshal-yanda","tag-nfl","tag-ravens","tag-ryan-mink","tag-terrell-suggs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116029611534851345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735697","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=735697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}