Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Like Barwegan, Gene Brito and Jim Ray Smith also began their pro careers at advanced ages because of military service. Brito was well past the age of 25 when he played his first NFL game. Base on conversations I've had with Smith, he went straight from being discharged to the Browns in November 1956...

John, I have a number of long-winded questions I hope you’ll address. You’ve cited experts from 2022 who rave about Young, some of whom apparently lobbied hard on his behalf. I have cited experts (the Sporting News all-pro team) who did not think that highly of Young, as they only included him on th...

The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia has an interesting and very useful method for rating players. They picked up on something Bob Carroll did in The Hidden Game of Football by awarding points to a player in each season that he was picked first team all-pro, second team all-pro, first team all-confere...

Brian mentioned Dick Huffman. He was an outstanding player in a short, four-year NFL career and then played seven years in Canada at a high enough level that he in the Canadian Football HOF. Seems like a complex case and it would be interesting to see how it gets handled. One important piece of Barw...

The Canadian leagues were paying large salaries to NFL players and an elite player like Barwegan likely got a hefty raise by going North, a big deal in those days of $5,000 per year salaries. So I very much doubt it was a matter of Ewbank giving up on him. Barwegan was a consensus second team all-pr...

Dick Barwegan
Al Wistert
Lavvie Dilweg
Jim Ray Smith (though his last season was 1964, he was too good to still be on the outside looking in)
Riley Matheson

Wow, so according to the game logs, Schlereth lied about having played against Young. He needs to be called out and shamed for this. JWL, sounds like you didn't read this discussion from the beginning. I mentioned several times that Young made the second team of the all-1990s team and also said seve...

For the record, the 49ers and Broncos played exactly twice during the time Schlereth was with Denver and both times were during Young's peak, not during those many years when the experts left him off their all-pro teams. In 1997, the year of the first of those games, Young missed four games and Schl...

That's a valid point, Jay, but I don't think it applies here. I certainly could be wrong but I think the experts I'm referencing who left Young off their all-pro teams for the vast majority of his career are different people than the ones John has mentioned who apparently convinced the HOF voters to...

I've posted here multiple times at some length and never once cited any "joes" as a source or in any way referenced anything by or about "joes." On the contrary, I have repeatedly mentioned that EXPERTS who evaluated Young AT THE TIME HE WAS PLAYING (as opposed to 20 years later)...