Former Saints Player Eric Allen named to the 2025 NFL Hall of Fame

St.Dan said
An interesting selection indeed. Folk need to remember this whenever the conversation is about the number of rings relative to other accolades when being considered for Canton. I'd have thought Allen's place in NFL history would be described with words like "solid" or "steady." I'm a bit surprised he made it all the way through the process, but remember, we've seen the bar get a little lower in recent years compared to what it was.

How can you say the bar is lowered when they only take 4 (3+1*) instead of the allowed 8?

The final steps of balloting reduces the list from 10 to 5 modern era candidates. So there were 2 more that made it to this step. They then vote individually. So 2 of the finalists did not meet the individual 80% voting threshold in the very last step as they could have taken all 5.

It might also be interesting to note that of the 41* previously inducted DBs only 26 of them have won NFL championships, so that is not really a requirement. Remember Ken Riley was also just recently inducted.

That being said Eric Allen was not on my radar as one of my 5 (+ 3). I actually did not think he would be a finalist.

*not including all the two-way players of the super early days of football.

*Sterling Sharpe was a senior candidate not a modern era candidate