The 25 greatest NFL Hall of Famers of all time

There is, of course, no definitive method for ranking the greatest professional football players in history. But I’m going to do it anyway.

Without a unifying principle like we have in baseball with Wins Above Replacement, arguing about who the best football players ever are is secondary to just making the list in the first place. The team at Pro-Football-Reference computes something called “Approximate Value,” but they will tell you themselves that AV is more a piece of evaluation rather than an attempt to paint the whole picture. The game has changed mightily over the many decades of great players, with changing points of emphasis and positional value; running backs used to run (pun … moderately intended) the NFL, but now the quarterback is inarguably the most important position in all of sports. 

Various efforts have been undertaken by various outlets over the years to rank the best players in the history of the game, though all of them inevitably come down to idiosyncratic systems of value. I probably tend to overrate quarterbacks and edge-rushers and perhaps underrate defensive backs. That is simply my own football-brain bias, and there’s nothing at all that can be done about it.

Note: this list ONLY includes players currently in the Hall of Fame. That, of course, excludes the greatest player of all time: Tom Brady, as well as Aaron Rodgers who also would have been in the low-mid 20s. I will also say "NFL history" to mean all of pro football history, including the AFL, becuase I think it is plenty clear what I mean. So without further ado, the 25 greatest Hall of Famers in NFL history. 

25. Rod Woodson

Woodson is probably the greatest cornerback in NFL history; yes, that includes Deion Sanders who missed out on this list entirely. That is because for all the press Sanders gets as the all-time cover corner and generational ball hawk, Woodson blows him out of the water in career interception totals, trailing only Paul Krause and Emlen Tunnell.

Woodson could tackle anyone, anywhere, and was incredibly versatile. He was a first-team All-Pro as a cornerback and as a free safety — they don’t just give those out. For the title of greatest corner (and second-greatest defensive back) of all time, give me Woodson.

24. Ronnie Lott

Like Woodson, Lott actually transitioned to free safety from cornerback, but his shift led to one of the most dominant six-year peaks of any player in NFL history: between 1986 and 1991, Lott was a first-team All-Pro five times, second-team once, had five or more interceptions in all but one season and generally just messed everybody up along the way. He wasn’t a bad cornerback or anything, and somehow got an MVP vote in 1981 as a rookie. But free safety Ronnie Lott is what you pass down to your grandkids.

Lott also won four Super Bowls, a stellar achievement for a position that doesn’t have much winning expectation. Not a lot of “wins are a free safety stat” people out there, but Lott always found a way to impact a winning team — he’s the NFL’s all-time leader in playoff interceptions.  

23. Deacon Jones

Official sack records only go back to 1982, but we have a pretty darn good idea of unofficial numbers further back. Enter: the Deacon, who threw down so many quarterbacks to the ground between 1964 and 1968 that he actually finished second in MVP voting in 1967. Jones recorded 100.5 sacks in five years in a much less pass-happy league with fewer games than there are today; that is just about 20 per season for half a decade. My goodness gracious. 

One of the all-time iconic Los Angeles Rams, Jones doesn’t necessarily have the career numbers to take him above Bruce Smith (I went back and forth forever on these two) but he absolutely needs to be on this list. Along with Rosey Grier, Lamar Lundy and Merlin Olsen, Jones captained the Fearsome Foursome for years. And best of all: Deacon Jones literally invented the term “sack.”

22. Ray Lewis

The NFL’s all-time tackle king and the central axis upon which the Baltimore Ravens built two Super Bowl-winning defensive units; Ray Lewis was not someone who would give an inch even if you didn’t mean to take a mile. He was a seven-time first-team All-Pro and a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, with a 16-year career of excellence at a physically demanding position. 

Lewis also famously captained the 2000 Ravens defense, probably the best single defensive unit in NFL history. For an entire season, the 2000 Ravens held opponents to under 250 yards per game and just over 10 points per game. No other team has really come close to those numbers; not the 1985 Chicago Bears, not the Seattle Seahawks Legion of Boom. 

21. Bruce Smith

Man did I want to put Bruce Smith higher on the list. When we’re talking counting stats, you can’t really do a whole lot better than him; he was a legitimately dominant defensive end for nearly 20 years, and kept up remarkably sack production for basically his entire career from 1985 to 2003. He has probably the cleanest career record in sports: 200 sacks, a mark very unlikely ever to be topped.

What’s even cooler about that record is that Smith never once led the NFL in sacks in his entire career. He was just stupidly consistent — first overall pick in the draft, nearly two decades of incredible play. The only shame is he never won a Super Bowl, always mentioned as one of the best ever without a ring. 

20. Otto Graham

Wins are a quarterback stat, are they? Well, then we should probably mention Otto Graham, who brought his Cleveland Browns to the NFL Championship Game every single year of his 10-year career. Between 1946 and 1955, Graham put together an .813 winning percentage, winning seven championships and playing for one every year. Not even Tom Brady, often called “the winningest player in NFL history” comes close to that.

It was a different era to be sure, and the Super Bowl era brought a faster, more competitive game that it would have been hard for an individual to so completely dominate. But Graham has to be on this list, since he personally defined an entire decade of NFL history. There is no single career more sterling than his. 

19. Emmitt Smith

Emmitt Smith isn’t the greatest running back of all time, but he is definitely the most relentless.  Smith had an incredible six-year peak early in his career, notching five first-team All-Pros and an MVP award just because. He won three Super Bowls for the dominant 1990s Dallas Cowboys, and is one of the most iconic individuals in league history. And he just … kept going.

Smith stopped making All-Pro teams, but he refused to stop running. He rushed for over 1000 yards for 11 consecutive seasons on his way to become the NFL’s all-time leader in rushing yards, rushing touchdowns and (I like this one) first downs. Smith just refused to stop running, and with how the running back has evolved recently to basically be a four-year position? I don’t think Smith’s records are at risk.

18. Anthony Muñoz

Offensive line! Don’t think we forgot about the other side of the trenches with Anthony Muñoz, the reigning, defending, undisputed best-offensive-lineman-ever champion of the wooooorld! Muñoz doesn’t have any stats to wow you with, because he spent his career preventing defending from racking up tasty sack totals. In his 13 years in the NFL, Muñoz was an All-Pro in all but two: his rookie year and his last year. 

Do you know how good you have to be for several outlets to name an offensive lineman the greatest player in Cincinnati Bengals history? But Muñoz really was that steady. He was the steady wall of an NFL offense for his entire career, and the city remembers him for it. We do too.

17. Randy Moss

In another ringless tragedy, Randy Moss caught the NFL and several hundred of its cornerbacks completely flatfooted as he brought size and speed to an explosive passing offense. He had a spotty career after his first six years (in which his lowest season-long yard total was 1233), but found a second, third, fourth and arguably fifth gear with the 2007 New England Patriots, probably the most dominant single season assault ever. Moss caught 23 touchdowns from Brady, a single season record.

He was also so good he became a verb. To “Moss” someone is to catch a football in their face, over their head or in some other manner of being-right-on-top-of-them has become common parlance. We must not forget who that was named for, as generations of football fans discuss how that guy got “mossed.” The man behind every Moss is Randy.

16. Barry Sanders

Barry Sanders is a player whose reputation has (somehow) still not exceeded his actual career. Sanders was the human embodiment of electric and has aged like the finest wine into the YouTube highlights era; if you have a young kid and want to show them old football clips, just Google “Barry Sanders highlights.” It’s going to blow their mind.

If you pull up his stats, it’s simply a preposterous career: Sanders never rushed for fewer than 1100 yards in his 10 seasons, he retired one single season after winning the MVP award and was named an All-Pro and to the Pro Bowl every year of his career. He showed up on top and left on top. Nothing quite like it.

15. John Elway

Elway played for winning teams and losing teams; he played his best and not his best. He was one of the toughest players ever to take snaps under center. But his greatest achievement? Not becoming “one of the greatest never to win a Super Bowl.” No, he handled that with extreme prejudice.

When Elway was at the end of his rope in 1997, he managed to eke out a legendary Super Bowl win to cap off his career … is what I would have said had he not COME BACK in 1998 and eked out yet another Super Bowl win to actually cap of his career. It’s a wonderful story, and the one that got him on this list. 

14. Sammy Baugh

Most people don’t know the NFL had its Shohei Ohtani before Travis Hunter, except its even cooler: Sammy Baugh wasn’t a wide receiver/defensive back: he was a quarterback/defensive back/punter — the triple Ohtani! Very different game, of course, and some will ding Baugh for having his best seasons when several teams were missing players due to World War II, but I won’t. When a guy leads the league in passing and in defensive interceptions in a single year (1943), he gets on the list.

Baugh was playing with a differently shaped ball which was harder to throw, and was one of the progenitors of the modern passing game. He is also one of the greatest punters ever, having held the single-season punting average record for a smooth 82 years until it was broken in 2022. Not bad.

13. Don Hutson

Don Hutson isn’t just the best non-Jerry Rice wide receiver in NFL history, he was also basically … the first wide receiver. Hutson invented many of the routes that have become standard in NFL offenses, was the first-ever 1000-yard receiver and basically created the position that has become the most exciting and recognizable feature of American sports. Sure, quarterbacks drop back to pass, but Don Hutson made it so someone was on the other end of the throw.

Hutson is often underrated because he retired in 1945, but do we underrate Albert Einstein for the theory of relativity even if we’ve made advances since? Do we underrate Mozart even though Taylor Swift is probably more popular? Some walk so others can run; Hutson ran so the NFL could become the most popular entertainment product in world history. 

12. Joe Greene

This is the first spot this list really super diverges from just adding up counting stats, though it certainly has already. If you just line up Joe Greene’s stats next to Bruce Smith’s, you would call me crazy for putting him this much higher. But thus is the power of historical memory, and the power of the Steel Curtain and Mean Joe Greene .

NFL history has certain buzzwords that evoke fear, and the Steel Curtain is just … man. Greene was the anchor of the most dominant, most consistent defensive unit ever. Terry Bradshaw was great, but there was no question who was leading the Steelers to their four Super Bowls in six years: it was the Steel Curtain. And Greene was the Steel Curtain.

11. Dick Butkus

Butkus only played nine seasons but was a terrifying and merciless tackler for all nine. Generally held up as one of the most intimidating players in NFL history, Butkus also defined and arguably  invented the middle linebacker, turning the position into the defensive quarterback it is today. 

Out of all the players I put on this list, Butkus also had by far the coolest nicknames on his Pro-Football-Reference page: “The Animal,” “The Enforcer,” “The Maestro of Mayhem,” “The Robot of Destruction.” The Maestro of Mayhem is just incredible stuff. Hats off to whoever cooked that one up.

10. Dan Marino

Marino is, to me at least, the reason that 1980s and 1990s quarterback play cannot be numerically compared to the modern game. Today, the sport is rigged to protect passing and encourage exciting, explosive plays. For Marino and his contemporaries? They could be killed in the pocket and would have no roughing the passer to save them. Their receivers could also be leveled over the middle without any “defenseless player” fouls, shrinking the field they could actually use. Marino is the epitome of this problem.

Had Dan Marino played in 2010, it is possible, if not downright likely, that he would have gobsmacking stats — he already does, having led the NFL in passing yards five times. Sure, he took a lot of sacks and threw a goodly number of interceptions, but he was also trying to drag the sport into the future when it was still stuck at the line of scrimmage. When he retired in 1999, he held basically every passing record in the book.

9. Johnny Unitas

Unitas was another one of the NFL’s greatest innovators, realizing that a quarterback could actually dictate the pace of a game with “hurry-up” offense and the two-minute drill — concepts he either invented, popularized or at the very least made work really really well.

His stats aren’t too shabby either; a three-time MVP and three-time NFL champ and an early Super Bowl winner too. Unitas was, arguably, the first great modern quarterback. He realized the value the passing game could provide and pushed it to its absolute limits. Even before Marino, Unitas retired with many career records to his name. 

8. Drew Brees

Had Tom Brady not existed, Drew Brees’ career statistics would be almost inarguably singular. In the golden age of pocket passing, Brees led the NFL in passing yards seven times, racked up insane totals and led his team to one of the most emotional Super Bowls ever, winning in 2009 after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Brees defied his physical limitations as an undersized quarterback and relatively slow footspeed through his fierce and uncompromising nature. Uber-competitive, Brees is a colossus of the quarterback position and was consistent enough to warrant a top-10 nod. 

7. Walter Payton

Walter Payton was a scintillating football player. Explosive, flamboyant, dominant. Payton’s legacy as a player, his awards and achievements can speak for themselves. But his reputation as a man and an inspiration goes so far beyond his playing career.  

Payton was the prototype for most modern running backs, from Sanders to Smith to later modern runners. His charitable work and foundation lend his name to the only award prestigious enough to be emblazoned on a player’s jersey for their entire career: the Walter Payton Man of the Year award. Every running back, but also every NFL fan, owes a great deal to Payton’s inventiveness and humanity.

6. Reggie White

The Minister of Defense would probably be the single greatest defensive player in NFL history had he not 1. started his career in the quickly defunct USFL and spent two seasons there and 2. retired in 1999 before coming back for one last season with the Carolina Panthers. If we take his 23.5 sacks in the USFL, round them down to 20 and add them to his NFL total? He smokes Bruce Smith’s 200 record with 218. White’s actual total of 198 feels like the minimum he could have achieved.

Lesser-known but arguably even more important was the fact that White kinda … invented NFL free agency? Before White left Philadelphia for the Green Bay Packers, players did not enjoy the type of true free agency that presently defines the sport. Once courts opened the floodgates for real free agent movement, White was the first to take advantage. The rest is (NFL) history.

5. Joe Montana

No more kids will grow up hearing this, but when I was a young lad the party line was that Joe Montana is the greatest of all time. I was there when Brady passed him and even purchased an updated Sports Illustrated Football’s Greatest copy for the sole reason of seeing the number one next to Brady’s name. Nevertheless, being the guy Brady had to pass is probably good for at least top five. I mean, come on now.

Montana is a legendary figure, and one of the reasons fans put so much emphasis on Super Bowl wins for quarterback evaluation. Montana won four and seemed like the coolest, calmest cat in the cohort while doing it. He has nowhere near the career statistics of guys like Brees or Brady (Brady, for example, has well over twice as many career passing yards), but he is remembered in popular imagination as the GOAT before the GOAT. Nobody can squash that.

4. Lawrence Taylor

The president, CEO and head of the party-planning committee of why you can’t just compare career stats when ranking NFL careers. Sure, Bruce Smith and Reggie White might actually be better on paper, but nobody changed the NFL like Lawrence Taylor. He was a meteoric defensive force, seeing the NFL’s shift toward a more pass-heavy approach and breaking it over his knee. 

There is no way to analytically explain Lawrence Taylor, and he is best captured in the stories and memories of those who played against him. He famously didn’t wear thigh or hip pads and churned his unstoppable motor ever after quarterbacks who consistently tried and failed to elude him. I never watched Lawrence Taylor, but I watch people’s eyes light up when they talk about him. That’s plenty convincing. 

3. Jim Brown

How do we measure a great running back game? That’s right: 100 yards. If a player hits 100 rushing yards, they had a great game. No one can be expected to do it every game, but it is the standard to which we hold the best runners. Well, Jim Brown is the only player to average over 100 yards per game for an entire career.

Brown is too big a cultural figure to properly capture in a couple of paragraphs; he was a transcendent football player, an actor and a pioneer of athletes speaking out for the American civil rights movement. He is an irresistible story and someone you could read about for thousands of pages and never get bored. I encourage you to go do that after you finish this piece.

2. Peyton Manning

Peyton Manning was the first real analytical darling. He played in someone else’s era: Brady, but he was the better statistical player for a chunk of it. Awards abound like you can’t imagine. The cerebral management of the line of scrimmage; the efficiency, the impossible way he interlocked his brainwaves with receivers. Manning was born to be an NFL quarterback, and he didn’t disappoint.

The 2013 Denver Broncos are also among the greatest teams to ever exist, with a passing offense that shattered every previously held statistical limitation. It was Manning’s final analytical achievement: 55 touchdown passes, smoking the previous record of 50. They tore everyone apart until they fell to the Ravens in double overtime. Manning never did win in the playoffs like Brady did, but his ability is not to be questioned. 

1. Jerry Rice

Jerry Rice achieved such absurd statistical heights that you might have to convince people he was real. Rice played at such a high level for so long that he essentially set unbreakable records in four categories: he is 80 touchdowns clear of the closest active player, Davante Adams. He is 9,600 yards clear of the closest active player, Deandre Hopkins. He is also 455 receptions clear of Travis Kelce and 8,721 scrimmage yards clear of Derrick Henry. For posterity, the distance between Rice’s career receiving yards record and number two, Larry Fitzgerald, is the same distance between Fitzgerald and number 33, Keenan Allen. 

Rice feels like a fake player to look at in hindsight. There’s literally no argument that anyone else is the greatest non-quarterback of all time. Throughout this list, we have been splitting hairs between players with overwhelming peaks versus those with incredible consistency — nobody synthesized those two pursuits like Rice. Even as the NFL expands its season to ever more games, Rice’s career records are so stupidly insane that I trust they’ll stay his for quite some time.

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