The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Matthews denied Hall entry
Hopes for Browns great’s induction shift to Senior Committee
Fair or unfair, Clay Matthews is going to need a ticket if he wants to get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year.
The name of the former Browns linebacker was not among those called when the 2021 Hall of Fame class was announced at the NFL Honors show as a lead-in to Super Bowl 55 Feb. 7 in Tampa, Fla.
Instead, the 48 Board of Selectors, in a vote conducted last month but not announced until the awards show Feb. 6, chose Peyton Manning, Alan Faneca, Charles Woodson, Calvin Johnson and John Lynch for induction.
“There are 15 other linebackers in the Hall of Fame that don’t have the stats Clay had and he isn’t in,” former Browns safety Felix Wright said in a phone interview. “It’s amazing, because I thought you got to the Pro Bowl or the Hall of Fame by what you did on the field and your accomplishments at your position. He by far exceeds a lot of the people that have been in for years. I know he has great character.”
Matthews played 278 games in his 19-year career that spanned 16 seasons with the Browns and three with the Falcons. His 1,561 tackles are third-most in NFL history. He was 39 years old in 1995 and still started 16 games for Atlanta that season. He is the oldest player in NFL history — 40 years, 282 days — to register a sack. He played in 15 games in 1996, forced three fumbles and had 6.5 sacks.
Matthews was inducted into the Browns Ring of Honor inside FirstEnergy Stadium in 2019. He is the only player in the Ring of Honor not in the Hall of Fame in Canton.
Matthews, picked 12th overall by the Browns in the 1978 draft (the same year they drafted Ozzie Newsome in the first round), holds the Browns record for games played (232), consecutive seasons (16) and quarterback sacks (76.5).
But longevity wasn’t enough to convince the selectors Matthews was Hall of Fame worthy. He played in three AFC championships but never a Super Bowl. He made the Pro Bowl only four times in 19 seasons. Pro Bowl voting at that time was done by players and coaches. Fans were not part of the process as
they are now.
This was Clay’s 20th and final year of eligibility as a modern era player. Now his name for consideration shifts to the Senior Committee. His chances for selection decrease because only one senior candidate a year is named a finalist. It could be years before Matthews’ name comes up again.
“When I look at the list from this year, the only player I might put in front of Clay is Peyton Manning,” Frank Minnifield, another teammate of Matthews with the Browns, said in a phone interview. “Clay did a good job for us all the time. He was always reliable and durable throughout his career.
“Clay was a great teammate. He was one of those guys who went out of his way to make sure he wasn’t on anybody’s side. He wasn’t on the linebackers’ side, he wasn’t on the defensive linemen’s side.
He was a Cleveland Browns football player. He got along with everybody.”
Teammates always getting along with one another might be expected by anyone on the outside looking in, but that isn’t how it went in the 1980s and 90s when players practiced in full pads and hit each other every day, according to Minnifield.
“I fought with the wide receivers many times in practice,” Minnifield said. “That’s because football is a constant conflict between two players trying to accomplish a totally opposite objective. But you never saw that with Clay Matthews. He was one of those players that didn’t show people up. He tried to play his best all the time. That should impress anybody.
“As many years as I played with him, I never saw him on the ground rolling around with one of his teammates, defensively or offensively. And I’m going to tell you; that is really, really hard to go through that many practices, to go through that many years of playing football and not have conflicts with your teammates. You never saw Clay down on anybody. You never heard him say anything bad at anybody. All my memories of Clay are great.”
Had Clay Matthews made the Hall, he would have joined his brother, Bruce Matthews, as the only siblings enshrined in Canton.
Bruce Matthews, a standout offensive lineman with the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 in his first year of eligibility.
To put in perspective how unique that would have been, 377 brother combinations have played in the NFL over the years, according to the Hall of Fame. The Hall had 331 player members before the 2021 class was announced.