Steve Smith's absence from the Pro Football Hall of Fame undermines its very credibility
by Alex Rubenstein
Six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Bill Belichick’s failure to be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame made enormous waves, and for good reason. The stain of those voters’ decision erodes the Hall’s very prestige and legitimacy. As to players, the most flagrant oversight is former wide receiver and Carolina Panthers legend Steve Smith, who’s been bypassed for enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in each of his first five years of eligibility and counting, which also sabotages the integrity of the hallowed Hall. While plenty of players who should be in are still awaiting their gold jackets, no omission is as egregious as Smith’s. Frankly, every existing Hall of Famer should hope, if not insist, he gets in, lest the entire credibility of the institution continue to be undermined.
And I say this as someone well aware of the chronic difficulties some of the game’s best wideouts have had in getting that Canton-bound knock on the door. Terrell Owens is widely considered one of the three greatest wide receivers of all time, and not only did he not get enshrined in his first year of eligibility, he had to wait until his third year of eligibility to earn his rightful place in football immortality. Isaac Bruce retired as the 2nd-leading receiver in NFL history and still had to wait until his sixth year of eligibility to get inducted. Meanwhile, folks the caliber of Reggie Wayne, Torry Holt, and Anquan Boldin remain on the outside looking in.
But no one’s got as strong a case to feel snubbed and rankled as does Smith. With the help of Stathead, I’ll break down his case into three distinct buckets: his regular-season bona fides, his postseason bona fides, and the Devin Hester paradox™.
1. regular-season bona fides
The man ranks eighth on the all-time receiving list with 14,731 yards (you’ll have to forgive Jerry Rice for excessively stretching this chart out):
I mean, just that right there should basically be enough said. But I’ll say more anyway: that’s also despite missing essentially an entire season of his prime in ‘04 with a broken leg. But for that speedbump, Smith surely would’ve finished his career no worse than third on the all-time list and quite possibly even second.
On a game level, there also exist certain yardage thresholds he reached with a greater frequency than just about anyone else. For instance, if you take a look at his career game log, sorted by receiving yards, you’ll notice how on nine occasions he had 165+ receiving yards. To put that in context, Larry Fitzgerald, the current all-time receiving runner-up and first-ballot Hall of Famer, had … two career such games.
You’ll also notice Smith had 22 games reaching 136 receiving yards, which is the same number of times Owens did so and one more than Randy Moss – with both members of that duo widely considered among the three greatest wideouts ever.
Those 36 games Smith authored with at least 117 receiving yards exceed Owens’ total while only having been surpassed by four players ever. And, owing to my staunch refusal to subscribe to the heavily flawed theory that cherry-picking round numbers as statistical benchmarks is inherently more profound than cherry-picking non-round numbers, I’ll shine a light on how his 54 games with at least 99 receiving yards have only ever been matched by four other guys.
A common pro-Smith talking point is that across his 230 total career games played, he didn’t exactly spend a ton of time as the beneficiary of scintillating quarterback play, with some pretty hysterical flotsam in particular among the 28% of his games he played outside the Delhomme/Newton/Flacco trio:
And even that triumvirate of primary signal-callers lags far behind the caliber enjoyed by many, many other star wideouts. But honestly I don’t even feel inclined (nor find it necessary) to lean on that as any sort of crutch, because while good quarterback play drives team success and bad quarterback play drives team failure, there’s plenty of evidence that that paradigm doesn’t necessarily extend to the production of high-level pass-catchers. As a brief aside, I’ll cite three of the more noteworthy examples. The first involves the GOAT, Jerry Rice.
Rice famously caught passes for the bulk of his career from two of the NFL’s 5-10 greatest all-time quarterbacks: Joe Montana (353 receptions for 6,122 yards and 55 touchdowns) and Steve Young (618 receptions for 8,768 yards and 85 touchdowns). But during a stint in ‘95 where Young’ backup, Elvis Grbac, got his first career starting action, Rice hauled in at least 108 yards worth of passes in four consecutive games. Throughout the rest of his career, despite all that time spent catching passes from two luminaries of the game, believe it or not Rice never put together four consecutive regular-season games with more than 90 receiving yards in each. He cleared that baseline by 20% with Grbac.
The second example involves the (distant) runner-up to Rice on the all-time receiving list, Larry Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald spent 14 of his 17 years in the Arizona desert mostly mired with mediocre quarterback play. He got a respite across 2008 and 2009, when Kurt Warner experienced his late-career renaissance in his final two seasons, as well as in 2015 when Carson Palmer crafted an All-Pro campaign. But it’s not exactly like that’s reflected in Fitzgerald’s production those three seasons.
In ‘09, Fitz had 1,092 receiving yards, the 8th-highest single-season total of his career and a number that he surpassed the following year despite going from the high-level QB play of Warner to the three-headed monster of Derek Anderson, John Skelton, and Max Hall – who, uh, did not provide high-level QB play – throwing to him. Hell, he averaged more receiving yards per game in ‘06 with rookie Matt Leinart under center than he did in one of his three precious seasons with a great quarterback. Across those other two strongly quarterbacked seasons (‘08 and ‘15), Fitzgerald averaged 1,323 receiving yards. Yet in 2011, he had 1,411 receiving yards despite being stuck with Skelton and Kevin Kolb, and he had a couple 1,409-yard seasons in ‘05 and ‘07 despite playing with the mid-career, much lesser version of Warner when he was in the purgatory between his 1999-01 fairytale start to his career and his dazzling 2008-09 twilight. Throughout Fitzgerald’s entire career, there’s little-to-no correlation between his personal production and the level of proficiency of his team’s quarterback.
And finally, the third example centers around Davante Adams. Adams has spent nearly his entire career playing with all-time great quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers plus, most recently, Matt Stafford. And yet! Arguably his most prolific individual season occurred in 2022, when his quarterback was his BFF – but certainly not all-time great – Derek Carr. Adams’ 1,516 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns were both the 2nd-highest marks of his career, which by itself speaks volumes given all those years playing with a quarterback much, much better than Carr. But it gets even more remarkable if you dig deeper, where you’ll notice that a whopping 10 of those 14 scores came from at least 25 yards out.
That’s the most such touchdowns in a season by anyone this century, matched only by ‘09 Chris Johnson and DeSean Jackson; and in 2022 specifically, only a few guys had even half as many. It’s also more than 3x as many such scores as Adams has pulled off in any other season. Again, not with MVP future Hall of Fame quarterback Rodgers or Stafford throwing to him, as has been the case for all but two seasons of his career, but instead doing so in one of said two seasons with the very much … not MVP, not future Hall of Famer Derek Carr throwing to him.
So even though I don’t personally feel inclined to lean into invoking Smith’s quarterbacks, you have that pie chart of ‘em just in case that floats your boat. Moving on.
2. postseason bona fides
A dirty little secret about Steve Smith is that he was arguably the greatest pass-catcher in NFL postseason history. Seems surprising, right? So if you don’t believe it, allow me to present you with this:
Thaaaaaat’s right. Among all NFL players who’ve participated in at least 10 playoff contests, both his 91 receiving yards per game and his 0.82 receiving touchdowns per game lead the pack. To use Moss and Owens for another point of comparison, Smith had more career postseason receiving yards and more career postseason touchdowns (thanks to a rushing TD and a punt return TD in addition to his nine receiving scores) than did Moss despite Randy having played over 36% more games. And despite likewise playing fewer games than Owens, Smith still managed to produce 250 more receiving yards and over twice as many touchdowns as T.O.
In addition to all that, Smith’s postseason efficiency was off-the-charts. He turned 86 targets into 1,001 receiving yards, good for a preposterous 11.64 yards per target:
Among every NFL player with even 70 postseason targets since that metric started being tracked in 1978, basically no one's even in Smith’s solar system. Perhaps the one exception would be Larry Fitzgerald, and even he resides well over a half-yard shy of Smith’s outrageous figure. The average yards per target amongst all the non-Smith entrants is 7.9, a number Smith tops by 3.7 yards. Just videogame stuff there.
When you tack Smith’s 11 total postseason touchdowns (one of which, by the way, was an electric double overtime walk-off) on top of the 89 total regular-season TDs he scored, my calculations tell me that sums up to 100 – a feat accomplished by just 11 other all-time wideouts (again, there goes ollllll’ chart-ruining Rice):
On to the final bucket.
3. the Devin Hester paradox™
In 2022, both Smith and former Chicago Bears return specialist Devin Hester became Hall-eligible. Hester was named a finalist to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in that first year of eligibility. As he again was in 2023. In 2024, not only was he a finalist, he was elected in just his third year of eligibility. The argument for his enshrinement is extraordinarily simple and revolves around one thing and one thing only: that he was the greatest return specialist in NFL history.
But as simple as that rationale is, the notion that the Hall should open its doors to someone just because they were the greatest ever at their position is just as flawed. It’s asinine to believe the level of impact made from that position should be irrelevant, which is what blindly voting someone in based solely on being the best at their position amounts to. To throw more cold water on that line of thinking, should the greatest long snapper of all time be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame? That oughta underscore the point that more nuance should be applied than simply placement among the pantheon of your position.
And when more nuance is applied, Hester being in and Smith being out is completely impossible to reconcile. The reason Hester’s regarded as the greatest return specialist ever – as well as how basically all of that value was manifested – is because of the number of touchdowns he scored returning punts/kicks, plain and simple. That is the crutch of his Hall of Fame case. Not the quantity of total touchdowns (38 career regular + postseason scores, a number exceeded by 545 other NFL players), but, with a record 21 being special teams returns (14 on punts, six on kickoffs, one on a missed field goal), the quality/impact of ‘em.
Because it is true that those 21 special teams touchdowns entail more personal responsibility than that stemming from most other touchdowns that happen on scrimmage plays. Punt or kick return touchdowns are gonna be from a significant distance out, while necessarily representing the entirety of the scoring drive. As opposed to most offensive touchdowns that are scored from perhaps a yard out or seven yards out or 13 yards out or 21 yards out or whatever.
The overwhelming majority of those touchdown possessions entail multiple plays being made by multiple players to methodically matriculate the ball close to the opponent’s goal line before it gets punched in. So the touchdown scorer often hits paydirt from a relatively modest distance away and is responsible for far less than 100% of the yardage ultimately traversed on the drive, which isn’t the case for special teams TDs.
And indeed, Hester’s 21 career special teams touchdowns occurred from an average distance of 80.7 yards out (which helps boost the overall average distance covered across his 38 total TDs to 58.6 yards). So that’s a complete and thorough acknowledgement of Hester’s value, giving him his flowers for those 21 supremely impactful touchdowns. And it still completely pales in comparison to Smith’s résumé and impactfulness.
Because also, when you think about it, a punt returner taking a punt 60 yards to the house is an identically equivalent impact as – if the punt were, say, fair caught instead – a wide receiver taking a reception on the ensuing play from scrimmage 60 yards to the house. They’re both one player representing the entire yardage of that touchdown possession. Granted there are of course also scenarios where a long TD from scrimmage could be scored that still doesn’t quite represent the entirety of the drive, but even as to the tailor-made-for-Hester element of scoring touchdowns from a large number of yards out, Smith arguably stands toe-to-toe with Hester at his own game:
Even setting aside the fact that Smith scored over 2.6 touchdowns for every one that Hester scored, if we use a threshold of 45 yards specifically to accommodate Hester (since that was the distance of his shortest special teams score), he had 25 such touchdowns in his career. Meanwhile Smith had 29 career scores from at least 50 yards out – 16% more touchdowns even from a distance that’s 11% further away.
Of course, certain large numbers could also be cherry-picked in which Hester had more touchdowns from that distance than Smith, but at the very least it can be said Smith more than holds his own vs. Hester in the lengthy TD department. And, again, that’s despite that element being the alpha & omega of Hester’s case. Which doesn’t even get into the extensive myriad of massive advantages in Smith’s favor in a theoretical head-to-head comparison with Hester.
For starters, Smith was an every down, snap-in, snap-out force for ~60 plays a game who racked up well over 12,000 receiving yards even on non-touchdowns. Compared to Hester, who, though he obviously had some good returns/plays that weren’t touchdowns, still had essentially all of his value and basically the entirety of his Hall of Fame case distilled down to those 21 special teams plays where he found the end zone. It’s really not any other stuff; there are plenty of other return specialists with comparable-or-better non-touchdown metrics – for instance Hester’s average of 11.7 yards per punt return is certainly good, but also right in line with a plethora of other returners.
And the coup de grâce for the comparison here with Smith is that Smith himself was an awesome return man for the first few years of his career. As a rookie in ‘01, he took three kicks/punts back to the house – one of which was the very opening kickoff of the very first game of his career – earning first-team All-Pro honors as a returner along the way. Through his second season, he had five such scores when no other NFL player had even four throughout that same 2001-02 period. He may well have been on his way to a Hester-esque career as a return specialist, but for one pesky problem: he was way too damn good as a wideout, meaning he eventually got yanked from those duties.
Ever since the heyday of Deion Sanders, we seldom see offensive or defensive stars get much work in the return game, in an effort to minimize injury risk and attrition. So it’s quite ironic: not only did Smith’s extreme prowess as an every-down all-time great wideout preclude his reaching his full potential in the much more niche, much less impactful role of return specialist – which apparently can unlock entry to Canton – but had Hester been a more proficient offensive or defensive player (and the ultimately unsuccessful effort came amid attempts at both), that likely would’ve curtailed his time returning kicks, thus keeping him from enshrinement. A situation where being better would’ve cost him. We’re talking Costanza dating levels of irony here.
If I’m being guilty of putting too much emphasis on total impact and contributions, and not enough on narrative, I’d wear that accusation as a badge of honor. And I’d love to know the rationale behind the voters who believed Hester is more deserving than Smith when even the lone pro-Hester argument, abundance of long touchdowns, doesn’t hold much water vs. Smith. Let alone Smith also having scored way, way more touchdowns overall in addition to his Mt. Everest of other feats vs. Hester’s relative molehill of non-long touchdown stuff.
So while I think there are plenty of other folks who also should’ve gotten into the Hall before Hester, it’s particularly glaring with Smith, especially given the apples-to-apples comparison of also having been a dynamic return man early in his career. And to crank up the crazy, Smith, in four of his five years of eligibility, wasn’t even named as one of the 15 Modern-Era finalists.
Along with Belichick’s shocking omission, the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s credibility will indeed continue to be undermined as long as the absence of someone like Smith continues to fester. And even if/when Smith does eventually get in, it will have always been years after Hester, which will still always be inexcusable. Not that Hester unequivocally shouldn’t ever be in, but if he should, he still cut the line. By a ton. And no one should feel more aggrieved – justifiably so – than Steve Smith.