The Denver Broncos franchise has churned out some of the most notable NFL Hall of Famers, and this former cornerback is eligible for the 2025 class. How cool would this be? Broncos all-time great Randy Gradishar finally got into the Hall of Fame in the 2024 class, and the Broncos could perhaps get another former player in for 2025.
That player is none other than chain-snatching CB Aqib Talib, who helped form the No Fly Zone in Denver that led to a Super Bowl victory in the 2015 NFL Season, the last game of the career of Peyton Manning, who has been in the Hall of Fame for years now.
Anyway, Talib played for a bunch of teams during his NFL career, but was with the Denver Broncos for the 2014-2017 seasons. During those seasons, he played in 58 regular season games, intercepting 11 passes, scoring six defensive touchdowns, and defending 48 balls thrown his way.
Four of his five Pro Bowls came with the Denver Broncos, and his lone All-Pro season came in 2016 with the team. Talib has 10 interceptions for touchdowns, which ranks as the fourth-most in NFL history. He also ranks 28th all-time in passes defended, with 125.
He played in 148 regular season games and 11 playoff games, giving him over 150 total games in the NFL. Aqib Talib was one of the most consistent and overall best cornerbacks of the 21st century, but I just do not know if he accomplished quite enough to make it into the Hall of Fame. If there was a Hall of Very Good, he'd be first-ballot.
Pro Football Refernce assisngs a numeric value to each player as a "Hall of Fame Monitor." They gave Talib a score of 45.90, but they also have the average number for HOF defensive backs at 98.02.
"Similar to Baseball-Reference's tracking of various Hall of Fame predictor statistics such as Bill James' Hall of Fame Monitor and Jay Jaffe's WAR Score System, as well as Basketball Reference's Hall of Fame Probability formula, Pro Football Reference has developed a Hall of Fame Monitor formula to help people get a quick idea of the strength of a player's candidacy for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Here's a link to the quarterback HOF Monitor page, which also includes links to the other positions. Links to these tables also appear under the Leaderboards and Awards section of player pages. This is calculated on the site for all players who debuted in 1955 or later and have played at least 50 regular season games."Pro Football Reference
Talib's number ranks 81st among defensive backs, according to PFR. Talib's score is similar to guys like Devin McCourty, Rodney Harrison, and Asante Samuel. It could be a huge uphill battle for the former Denver Broncos cornerback to make it into the Hall, but it's nice that there is again another possibility that the Broncos could again be represented in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.