Without Super Bowl 3, Joe Namath is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Yet without Joe Namath, the modern NFL does not exist.
The New York Jets legendary quarterback did more for this sport on one Sunday at the Orange Bowl than any player in history—and he accomplished it without throwing a single touchdown.
Rather than gunslinging his way to a boatload of electrifying touchdowns and costly interceptions, Namath called a smart game from the line of scrimmage en route to the greatest upset in professional American sports history, a 16-7 final over the Baltimore Colts. The only gunslinging Namath did that week in Miami happened off the field, as guaranteeing victory and perhaps partaking in some off-the-field activities suffice.
OTD 1969#SuperBowl III#Jets #Colts
— Old Time Football 🏈 (@Ol_TimeFootball) January 12, 2025
One of the most important games in the history of Pro Football.
Joe Namath backs up his guarantee winning MVP.
Beverly (2), Sample, Hudson INT
16-7 #TakeFlight
pic.twitter.com/vxsGhJYRx3
It was the first stunning statement from the young AFL—after two disastrous Super Bowl performances—and it forced Pete Rozelle, Vince Lombardi, and the rest of the NFL to raise an eyebrow of concern laced with abundant potential.
A year later, after the Kansas City Chiefs knocked off the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl 4, the merger came to fruition. Len Dawson, Hank Stram, and Lamar Hunt stamped the AFL’s arrival, thanks to Namath starting the party—as he often did during our country’s anti-establishment cultural revolution.
No human can write a synopsis of NFL history without mentioning Namath’s name, and that’s exactly why he undoubtedly belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Namath was inducted in 1985 on his third ballot.)
Similarly, no individual can write the history of the Super Bowl without mentioning Eli Manning, and that’s exactly why he, too, deserves Hall of Fame enshrinement.
While many argue Manning’s Hall of Fame qualifications, few dig deep enough to understand what the Hall of Fame is and just how subjective enshrinement can be. Though the world argues, any controversy simply boils down to a uniqueness that Joe Namath’s career can help explain.
Yes, Manning deserves a gold jacket, but he should be recognized in the rarest form, akin to Namath—in the same special Canton, OH category.
Forget the stats
While overall statistics do matter, Eli Manning belonging to the Joe Namath-type Pro Football Hall of Fame class has nothing to do with stats. In fact, the reasoning behind the similarities deals with a contrasting idea of sorts: the written word.
It’s about history, folks. It boils down to an individual’s immense impact on the game’s history.
I’ve seen many New York Giants fans go to bat for Manning by rattling off his all-time passing rankings in this league’s illustrious history:
- 11th all-time in passing yards (57,023)
- 11th all-time in passing touchdowns (366)
- 11th all-time in passes completed (4,895)
Though impressive at face value, in reality, and ultimately, these rankings do not and will not hold up over the long haul. Mentioning his all-time statistical prowess is not the way to handle it.
The stats and his historical ranks should only be utilized to support the meat and potatoes of his Hall of Fame claim—en route to separating himself from the one-hit Super Bowl wonders like Doug Williams, Timmy Smith, and David Tyree.
Benefits such as the 16-game schedule and outright discrimination towards defensive football (rule changes favoring the offense) arriving towards the end of the century’s first decade make Manning’s stats similarly inflated to that of his contemporaries.
Matt Ryan is eighth all-time with 62,796 passing yards. Phillip Rivers is sixth in the same category with 63,440. Ben Roethlisberger is fifth with 64,088 career passing yards, for crying out loud.
That’s not to take a shot at Big Ben, either; it’s instead to showcase the lunacy of how drastically the game has changed. Roethlisberger is a bonafide Hall of Famer himself, but nobody should confuse him with a Dan Marino-type—who’s insanely fallen to ninth in career passing yards (61,361).
Like Joe Namath, Eli Manning’s eventual Hall of Fame status boils down to historical impact. Period.
Writing the book
When fans of the NBA foolishly attempt to rank Kobe Bryant in the top three or top five all-time, my retort is as follows: “Ok, what is Kobe’s most memorable moment?”
What’s the moment that jumps off the page, akin to Michael Jordan’s last shot in Utah against Byron Russell? What’s Kobe’s ultimate moment in time that places him alongside Jordan in a way that impacted the game’s most cutthroat and pressurized chapter?
They usually fail to provide a legitimate answer.
While Kobe is definitely in the top 15 (and could be argued to be in the top 10), he never put his unique stamp on NBA history the way others like Jordan did. He never quite captured those absolute moments in time that will hang in our memories forever.
This is not the case for Eli Manning.
Manning and the 2007 Giants defiantly spit in the face of NFL history. Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the 2007 New England Patriots were just a few minutes away from immortality, and Eli Manning stopped it cold.
Manning owns those moments. He’ll forever be attached to those epic and rare moments. His slow-footed pace escaping the pocket against New England to heave a football that turned into arguably the greatest play in Super Bowl history is part of his Hall of Fame resume.
"The Helmet Catch"
— Kevin Gallagher (@KevG163) February 3, 2024
Eli Manning to David Tyree
SUPER BOWL XLII#Giants–#Patriots
February 3, 2008 pic.twitter.com/LfBoIayPb2
If that wasn’t enough for the anti-Manning crowd, he did it again four years later to the same team, same coach, and same quarterback—for whom many call the greatest of all time. And he did it while trailing late in the game, engineering yet another late-moment victory on the grandest of stages.
Eli Manning To Mario Manningham 12 Years Ago Today pic.twitter.com/ssvUA1l4YF
— Giants Fans Online (@NYGFansOnline) February 5, 2024
Namath and Manning belong to a unique HOF category
Had Joe Namath’s candidacy been boiled down to his overall statistics, he would have never received that gold jacket. Many football fans, albeit foolish fans, still argue his overrated nature by citing the stats.
“How could any quarterback with just 173 touchdowns to an absurd 220 interceptions ever be considered great?” they frequently ask.
Well, dummies, first and foremost, the era in which Namath played was extraordinarily different. The 1960s featured a decade of forward-pass tinkering for which quarterbacks frequently threw interceptions.
The great Fran Tarkenton threw 266 interceptions (to 342 touchdowns) in his 18-year career, which began in 1961. Len Dawson threw 183 interceptions (to 239 touchdowns) in his 19-year career, which started in 1957. Bart Starr threw 138 interceptions to just 152 touchdowns in his 16-year career, which started in 1956.
The game back then was just … different. The forward pass was in its infancy, and it was used to gain chunks vertically—well before the West Coast offense infiltrated the sport.
Namath, having been the first to throw for 4,000 yards in a season (14-game schedule), making such an indelible mark in the sports and pop-culture crossover (he, Muhammad Ali, and Arnold Palmer together), and springboarding the modern NFL into existence, courtesy of the greatest upset in the history of sports, makes his Hall of Fame case ironclad.
The same can be said for Eli Manning, who led his team to the second-greatest upset in sports history (this side of the Miracle on Ice).
Peyton’s little brother stopped NFL history in its tracks, was arguably the coolest customer under the brightest lights, and remains one of just six men to ever win Super Bowl MVP honors multiple times (Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Patrick Mahomes, Terry Bradshaw, and Bart Starr).
Although he didn’t get in on the first ballot, he’s a shoo-in for a gold jacket.
Without the Super Bowl, Eli Manning cannot sniff anything close to a Hall of Fame career.
Yet, without Eli Manning, the Super Bowl could not dare dream of etching a historical synopsis.
Eli Manning is a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback, and he belongs in the unique wing where Joe Namath lives.
Case closed.
