If Andrew Luck Somehow Winds Up In The Hall of Fame, Cam Newton Should Be An Eventual First-Ballot Canton Inductee
Given how many worthy candidates there still are for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, I feel like the whole thing would be a bit of a sham if Andrew Luck is enshrined. Doubt you'll hear many cases that he should be a first-ballot selection, but the notion that Luck deserves to be a Hall of Famer feels ridiculous to me.
Numbers don't lie. I don't often like boiling everything down to one metric. It's just that this one feels particularly useful:
Luck was the No. 1 overall pick, helped the Indianapolis Colts overachieve despite a pretty bad roster, and was among the most hyped-up quarterback prospects of all-time. During the short window in which he actually did play in the NFL, Luck more or less lived up to near-impossible expectations.
For such a brainiac who went to Stanford, though, Luck played a pretty fucking stupid brand of football. Rather than using his not-inconsiderable athleticism to take off and run more often, learn to actually slide properly, and thus avoid taking massive hits in the pocket, he put on that tough guy front and famously congratulated defensive players for blasting the ever-living piss out of him.
The inevitable outcome: multiple injuries, a full missed season and half of another lost to bad physical health. That wound up taking a toll on Luck, who couldn't handle the constant cycle of pain, injury, rehabbing and limping into Sundays. Not surprising that he retired so early.
Among other big-name personalities, Colin Cowherd looooooves him some Andrew Luck:
However…
I feel like letting Luck into the Hall of Fame undermines the integrity and spirit of the place. Spin it any which way you want, Luck quit on football before he turned 30.
You don't want to only reward longevity, yet it's not as if Luck put up some unbelievable, transcendent numbers — despite what that lead tweet says. We're talking about a guy who completed only 60.8% of his passes, had a QB rating of less than 90 and committed tons of boneheaded turnovers.
What if I told you that the Colts largely carried Luck to a 4-4 playoff mark? In the postseason, his completion percentage dropped to 56.4%, with 12 TDs, 13 INTs, and a dismal 73.4 passer rating.
Hall of Fame? Are you fucking serious? We're obliterating the hell out of Dak Prescott these days because he can't get it done in the playoffs. Dude has a 92.3 passer rating across six starts with an 11-5 TD-INT ratio. You won't find one serious human being who believes Dak is on the fast track to Canton.
I'm not here to compare Luck to Dak, as is self-evident in the headline. Instead, I want to look at another former top pick in the draft and once upon a time a Heisman finalist alongside Luck, Carolina Panthers legend Cam Newton.
MLFootball assembled a compelling HOF case for Cam not long ago, with an obnoxious, well-beyond-the-character-limit list of achievements and accolades:
Cam got the tail end of Steve Smith's career. Otherwise, can you even name any of the wide receivers he had the privilege of throwing to? At least Luck had TY Hilton!! Cam boasts a career passer rating of 85.2 and a completion rate of 59.9%. Not terribly far off from that of Luck's with a similarly "MEH" supporting cast on offense.
…Except then you factor in that Cam was basically the most efficient running quarterback of all-time until we were introduced in recent years to the likes of Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts. The Panthers ran Cam into the ground and counted on him to be "Superman" and he pretty much was. In his MVP-winning 2015 season, he carried Carolina to a 15-1 record, an actual Super Bowl berth with Ted Ginn Jr. as his WR1, and officially revolutionized the QB position.
By the way, whereas Luck's numbers fell off a cliff in the playoffs, Cam's didn't (59.8% COMP, 10 TDs, 7 INTs, 87.7 rating). He also has almost double the amount of mostly-complete seasons as a starter (nine) as Luck had (five). Nine years isn't a terribly long time compared to the likes of Tom Brady. It's more than five.
I guarantee you, though, that nobody will be gassing up Cam as a Hall of Famer whenever he's eligible. Not that I agree with the guy on how he sees the world, how arrogant he can come across as, or that he's a true all-time great. But like…if we're going to make every excuse in the book for Andrew Luck, then Cam Newton deserves that same benefit for his Hall of Fame candidacy.