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Leroy Butler Snubbed by Hall of Fame Voters Again

Yesterday the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced its finalists, and once again, former Packers safety Leroy Butler wasn’t on it.

To me Butler is a fringe Hall of Famer. I can understand him not getting in. But what I can’t understand is how contemporaries John Lynch and Steve Atwater cruise into the final round but Butler gets shorted year after year.

Part of my frustration comes from the fact that Butler was one of the best players on my favorite team during my formative years. I’m biased, surely, but the bigger issue here is this: I’m not nearly as biased as the facts.

John Lynch was a great player, possibly a HOF caliber player. He played 15 years, made 2 All-Pro teams, 9 Pro Bowls. He registered 13 sacks and 26 interceptions, and claimed one Super Bowl Ring with the Buccaneers, for whom he was the fourth best player on one of the best defenses of all time, the 2002 incarnation of the Warren Sapp/ Derrick Brooks squads.

That’s a great career.

Leroy Butler played 12 years, his career cut short by a neck injury. He made 4 Pro Bowls and 4 All-Pro teams, the latter being the greater honor of the two accolades. He registered 20.5 sacks and 38 interceptions, the first player ever to hit both of those benchmarks. He also won one Super Bowl, and lost in another where the Wisconsin State Journal’s Tom Oates writes that his opponent schemed their entire offense around him (playing on a defense that included the likes of Reggie White, Gilbert Brown, and Eugene Robinson).

Butler was the second-best player on one of the greatest (and most underrated) defenses of all time.

Butler also invented the Lambeau Leap, a celebration that became the symbol of the Packers that remains the go-to celebration 25 years later and has been adopted by players throughout the league.

He was also named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team of the ’90s…over his contemporary John Lynch. Another contemporary of Butler in the ’90s? Steve Atwater. Butler was joined by Atwater on that All-Decade team, and the two are the only members of the team of the ’90s not enshrined in Canton.

Fritz Shurmer blitzed Butler from all over the field (more on this from Robert Olson here), creating havoc in opponents’ backfields. He lined him up at corner, his position in college at which he still excelled years after his switch.

Lynch and Atwater are great players. What I can’t understand is how they earn more respect in HOF voting than Butler, whom every GM in football would have taken first in a draft of these safeties in their primes.

Unfortunately, the best shot for Atwater and Butler has likely passed, at least until they’re up for consideration by the Seniors Committee down the road. That’s because Ed Reed is now on the ballot, and there’s no question he should get in on the first ballot. Then Troy Palamalu, a high-profile superstar, will add his name to the list. There’s also a glut of worthy candidates flooding the ballot in coming years from positions voters tend to reward, not to mention a staggering backlog at the wide receiver position, where hall-worthy Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, and Sterling Sharpe already linger, with Reggie Wayne and others coming soon.

His best chance may have passed, and maybe Butler doesn’t belong in the Hall, but he certainly belongs in the conversation.