It’s been overshadowed by a flurry of free-agent signings and trades, but Patrick Willis shocked the football world this week with his sudden retirement from the NFL.
Willis never put up big numbers and didn’t play a flashy position, and his play had begun to fall off as he dealt with injury problems the last couple years, but this is close to being a Barry Sanders-type of walk-away. The man was ranked by his peers last offseason as the 27th-best player in the NFL. He was an All-Pro in 2012 and a Pro Bowler in 2013. He was the heart and soul of one of the league’s best defenses.
And yet only six weeks after turning 30, he’s apparently gone.
Willis was undoubtedly on the Hall of Fame track. The San Francisco 49ers linebacker was a first-team All-Pro in five of his first six seasons. He had over 100 tackles in six of his seven seasons before missing all but six games in 2014. The problem is that only four other modern-day players — Earl Campbell, Lee Roy Selmon, Lynn Swann and Kellen Winslow — have made the Hall of Fame despite playing fewer than 10 seasons.
Only Campbell played nine, and Sanders actually played 10. But not a single modern-era member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame played just eight seasons. Willis was only effective for seven, which might not be enough considering that he didn’t win any Super Bowls and was never MVP or defensive player of the year.
Sadly, the Hall of Fame backlog will only accumulate in the years to come. So with great linebackers like Randy Gradishar, Sam Mills and Lee Roy Jordan still out of Canton, it won’t be easy for Willis to squeak in, despite the fact he played a role in reviving the inside linebacker position in an era that gives most of its love to edge-rushers.
It’s hard to ignore those five All-Pro nods. Willis is one of only six modern-day players to have that many All-Pro honors before the age of 29, and the other five are in the Hall of Fame. But the other five also kept going, and there are two other five-time All-Pros — Zach Thomas and Kevin Williams — who aren’t and probably won’t be Hall of Famers.
It’s a close call, but I just don’t think Willis has done it over a long enough period of time.
