Herschel Walker has done great work lately getting people to talk about him again nearly 20 years after he last played. He’s trying to return to MMA fighting. He’s claiming again that he could still play in the NFL. He’s supporting his former USFL boss, Donald Trump, for president.
He’s also talking about getting into the Pro Football Hall of Fame some day, or at least he did last week on NBC Sports Radio.
That’s the talk the world should take seriously. Because he belongs. He can make a case for getting in, and it’s a good one.
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So far, though, he has never made the semifinalist cut, much less finalist.
Others have pitched on his behalf in recent years — on the NFL’s website, and on the Talk of Fame Network website, run by longtime national football writers Clark Judge, Ron Borges and Rick Gosselin. The themes are similar: it’s not just the “NFL” Hall of Fame.
As the biggest star with the most spectacular numbers in the USFL’s brief history from 1983-85, Walker might be the biggest example ever of falling through the Hall’s cracks.
Even if voters suddenly change their minds on him, Walker is still behind all the NFL players snubbed, and the old AFL players whose excellence is forgotten.
Still, no one credits him for rushing for 2,411 yards in the 18-game season of 1985. No one counts his 5,562 career rushing yards, or his 7,115 all-purpose yards, or his 61 touchdowns. (All according to totalfootballstats.com and usflsite.com, two labors of love if there ever were such things.)
Start recognizing them, Walker said last week.
“Oh, there’s not a doubt,” he told NBC Sports Radio’s Newy Scruggs. “I was talking to someone today — and lately, it’s been coming up a lot — and they were bringing up just my stats from just the NFL. And my stats from the NFL still got me in the top 10 in a lot of the things that I’m doing.
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“And if you did throw in the USFL, which makes it (all of) professional football, a lot of my yardage put me way, way ahead of everybody. So I don’t know why they wouldn’t put me in.’’
“Way, way ahead of everybody” seems like a stretch. Until you realize that, in fact, Walker is 10th in NFL history with 18,168 all-purpose yards. Of the seven players ahead of him currently eligible for the Hall of Fame, six are in. The only exception is kick-return specialist Brian Mitchell (who is being vastly overlooked, but that’s for another time).
Walker’s 8,225 NFL rushing yards, all after joining the NFL at age 24, is decent, but not Hall-worthy — but with his USFL yardage, he’s at 13,787, ahead of all but four rushers in NFL history. His 145 combined touchdowns would tie him with Marcus Allen for sixth all-time.
And as for being “way, way ahead” … Walker’s 25,283 all-purpose USFL-NFL yards beats out Jerry Rice’s career record total by nearly 2,000 yards.
The best of the USFL also were Canton no-brainers for their NFL careers: Jim Kelly, Reggie White, Steve Young and Gary Zimmerman. Walker is the anomaly — no one else’s career arc is like his.
Walker’s entire pro football career stands on its own merits. Not the merits of how the league incinerated itself (speaking of Trump). Not the merits of one of the most lopsided trades in NFL history (that unfairly hangs over Walker’s head, too). Not even the distraction of constantly insisting he could still play, in his 50s.
Focus on what he did in his 20s, especially his early 20s, when he played in a rival spring league and ripped it up at a Hall of Fame pace.