Jack Lantern
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Barnwell: Projecting future Hall of Famers for all 32 NFL teams
Is J.J. Watt a future Hall of Famer? How about Patrick Mahomes? Julian Edelman, Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman? Which current players have the best cases?
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KC Chiefs, Lock (100%): QB Patrick Mahomes. I addressed this in my MVP column in July. Mahomes' résumé -- a league MVP and Super Bowl MVP -- is usually enough to get a player into the Hall of Fame, let alone doing it over two seasons as a starter.
Likely (70% to 99%): LB Khalil Mack. He has made five consecutive Pro Bowls and has three first-team All-Pro nods to go with his Defensive Player of the Year trophy from 2016. He has been one of the five best players at the second-most lucrative position in football over the past five years, and the fact that he was traded for two first-round picks and then delivered a wildly successful season with all of that attention in 2018 helps him. He probably needs two more All-Pro seasons to finalize his case.
In the running (40% to 69%): S Eddie Jackson. A starter from day one, Jackson was a first-team All-Pro while leading the league in interceptions in 2018. Jackson and teammate Kyle Fuller both slipped last season, but each earned Pro Bowl nods, and that's going to matter more to voters 15 years from now than how either player actually performed in 2019. The reason Jackson is in this section and Fuller is in the next group is that Jackson has made two Pro Bowls in three seasons while Fuller has two across six years.
Work to do (10% to 39%): TE Jimmy Graham, CB Kyle Fuller. Graham's case is interesting. His peak is Hall of Fame-worthy -- he has two of the three best seasons in fantasy football history by a tight end -- but it lasted only four seasons. From 2015 to 2019, his numbers are virtually identical to those of Eric Ebron. Graham has five Pro Bowls to his name, but I don't think he has done enough to earn a gold jacket.
