It’s okay for Broncos fans to be mad at the Hall of Fame

On Wednesday, the NFL made interested fans sit through hours of their insufferable Good Morning Football program to find out who made it to the hall of fame, and who didn’t. Spoiler: It was yet another hall of fame announcement with zero Broncos on it.

The fact of the matter is that Dan Reeves and Randy Gradishar are overly-qualified to join their rightful contemporaries, but they came up short in favor of less-deserving names that played for larger market teams.

Jimmy Johnson and Bill Cowher can’t say that they won four conference championships, but Dan Reeves can. The hall of fame selectors see Jimmy Johnson and Bill Cowher on television every week and so it’s probably a lot of work to dive into their stats and actually examine other candidates. If the rub against Reeves is that he won only because of John Elway, why not knock Jimmy for the cadre of hall of famers he coached on the way to his two Super Bowls? In the hall of fame’s eyes, those three 1980’s Super Bowls were all Elway... so why doesn’t Reeves get any credit for doing it with literally no other hall of famers on his team? It’s ridiculous. It’s a joke.

Then there’s Randy Gradishar. We’ve written dozens of articles trumpeting the accomplishments of Denver’s great Orange Crush linebacker that we can throw onto the pile articles written by Denver media, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Clearly those that vote can’t read them or simply choose not to. Jimbo Covert made it into the hall over Randy Gradishar. A man with 2 All-Pro selections and a whopping 2 pro bowls was somehow more deserving than a 6-time All-Pro, 7-time All-AFC player with 7 Pro Bowl appearances. The math doesn’t add up. It’s a disgrace.

On Wednesday, the hall of fame got it wrong. A diverse group of mostly 60+ white men couldn’t see past their Sunday morning football talk shows and screwed Dan Reeves. They refused to look at the stats and qualifications of maybe the greatest linebacker in Broncos history and opted instead for a 2-time pro bowler. I can only hope that one day we see that level of hall of fame talent again in our lifetime. Two pro bowls.

Barf.