CLAY MATTHEWS REMAINS STUCK JUST SHORT OF SERIOUS HOF CONSIDERATION

By STEVE KING

Now-retired Joe Horrigan had a name for it when he served the Pro Football Hall of Fame in a variety of rolls for four decades, the last of which was executive vice president of communications and exhibits.

He called it the “Pro Football Hall of the Very Good,” a place for players who were excellent, but not quite Hall of Fame worthy. There are a lot of big names forever stuck there, and one of them appears to be former Browns outside linebacker Clay Matthews.

Matthews, who played in the NFL for 19 years, with the Browns from 1978-93 and then with the Atlanta Falcons from 1994-96, made the list of 25 semifinalists for the HOF class of 2020 back in November but failed to advance to the list of 15 modern-era finalists that was announced the other day. It is the fourth time he has been a semifinalist without becoming a finalist.

That’s disappointing, to be sure, but it may also be accurate, at least in the eyes of the Hall voters, or else he would be a finalist.

As much as I admired Matthews’ career – he was one of the best linebackers of his era and, as a four-time Pro Bowler and twice an All-NFL choice, he is as decorated, and as good, as any linebacker in Browns history – but he wasn’t quite of HOF-caliber. Part of that stems from a problem affecting almost all Browns players from the last half of the 1980s including Matthews, Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnifield, that they never got to a Super Bowl, where they would have had the opportunity to prove their worth on the biggest stage in the sport. That’s where legends are born.

So, like the Browns as a team advancing to three AFC Championship Games in a four-year period but never the Super Bowl, Matthews got close enough to be in the conversation but wasn’t good enough to be on the finalist list. The only Brown from that time to make it to the finalist list was tight end Ozzie Newsome, who went on to be enshrined in the HOF in 1999. Like Newsome, Matthews was a first-round choice by the team in the 1978 NFL Draft.

What will change going forward, even when Matthews is moved to the list of those older players under consideration by the Seniors Committee? Really, nothing, which keeps him stuck in neutral, on the outside looking in.