On balance, I think now that I’d vote for Art Monk.

As for Art Monk, he should be in. I think his exclusion lies in the fact that he wasn’t spectacular, just steady. When the Redskins needed seven yards for a first down, he got eight. He never was known for aerial acrobatics or turning short passes into long runs ala Jerry Rice. Still, without him, the Redskin offense would have suffered, and probably would not have won three Super Bowls.

The “Swann rationale” for Hall of Fame inclusion has to do with several things: playing on a “run first, run second, throw as a last resort” team, he nonetheless made a significant impact. Two, he did play on 4 Super Bowl winning teams (don’t remember if the Skins won any during Monk’s tenure or not, though I’d guess that they did win one or two). Third, strange as it sounds, I think that Lynn Swann gets “style points”, much in the way Gale Sayers, say, would. Fourth, and I understand that this is subjective, but Bill James, the baseball guru, would give this a lot of weight, there is the question of “how was the player perceived during his time in the league.” I think that during his time, Lynn Swann had several years when he was considered to be either the best or one of the couple of best WR’s in the game—compared, again, to the best in his own era. Stats just don’t tell nearly the whole story.

I think that a pretty decent argument can be made for Art Monk’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame—but it has nothing to do with Lynn Swann. Thus, I’ll pass on the vomiting…

Are you kidding me ??? Swann is in and Monk isn’t ? In this era Swann is Randel-El. In 10 years he averaged 33 catches a season ??????
Let me go vomit now

The ones selected yesterday who I didn’t name were John Madden, Harry Carson, and Rayfield Wright. Wright’s selection shocked me. Madden? A pretty good coach, but if he hadn’t been a broadcaster all these years, would his coaching credentials alone have gotten him in? Not a chance. Carson? I don’t know…he certainly was a great player on a fabulous defense, but he played alongside the greatest LB of all time in Lawrence Taylor; was he made the better because of that connection (same argument could be made against L.C. Greenwood—a reason I included neither on my list). I just always (admittedly subjectively) thought of Derrick Thomas as a better player than Carson. Gary Zimmerman might have been a stretch on my part; I relied on the ESPN summaries of Pro Bowls, All-Pro teams, etc; before reading that, I’d have (subjectively) probably ranked Bob Kuechenberg ahead of him, and maybe another. He just had a nice, quiety, great career—and it still seems to me that he deserves induction.