Good morning Twitter.

If you don’t put Devin Hester in the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame is a fucking joke. pic.twitter.com/hm1zAz4Mlc

— DaBearsBlog (@dabearsblog) April 19, 2021

Brian Urlacher will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this evening, the culmination of one of the great careers in the history of the Chicago Bears.

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Over the next two days I want to use the comments section below to allow fans to share their favorite Urlacher plays, stories, moments…etc. Anything about Brian that resonated with you.

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For me, I never forgot seeing #54 pick off Chad Pennington in the end zone at Giants Stadium in 2006, no more than 40 yards from where I was sitting. It was just one of the many times an Urlacher play completely turned a game on its head. (The play can be found at the :30 mark of the video below.)

On behalf of myself and the DBB team, congrats Brian. And thank you.

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I’ll share some of the best comments re: Urlacher in game previews throughout the season.

Five Super Bowl Thoughts

• First Half Note 1: That was a horrible half of a football. Was it entertaining? Sure. But so is college football and that is rarely good either. Blown coverages, horrible tackling, wide open receivers, college-level kicking. This game should be the showcase of the league’s two best teams. Sadly, when it comes to the 2017 season, this game may be all we got.
• First Half Note 2: The Eagles didn’t just look tougher, they looked like they had the better sideline. And even in the two Patriots Super Bowl losses, that was never the case. Pederson was running circles around Patricia.
• Halftime: The halftime show was one of the greatest I’ve ever seen. Oh wait, no, I was cleaning my crockpot and listening to Harry Nilsson tracks in my kitchen while some people pantomimed horn playing in the middle of a football field for no reason whatsoever. Would love to see the NFL skip this worthless musical display one year and instead replace it with a speech from the Walter Payton Man of the Year winner after a short video presentation saluting that player’s work. Why not use your largest platform to promote some of the good being done by those involved in the game instead of promoting Justin Timberlake to sell some Pepsi?
• Second Half Note 1: Tweeted a question. If you were the Eagles, and you won the Super Bowl with Foles, would you consider offering Wentz to the Browns for their two early firsts? Watching the second half, if I were the Eagles, I would even hesitate. Wentz is a terrific player but this Eagles team is proving they can win with Foles and he’s affordable. So why not stack the roster around him?
• Second Half Note 2: Let’s be honest. This game came down to one play, the Brandon Graham sack/fumble of Brady late in the fourth. It was the only defensive play made in this Big 12 affair.
• Final Thought: Think about what Doug Pederson and Nick Foles and the Eagles just did. They beat (a) the defending NFC champs (b) the league’s best defense and (c) Brady & Belichick en route to the franchise’s first Super Bowl title. This is legendary stuff in Philadelphia.

All Urlacher…after the jump!

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I’m not big on debating whether or not players belong in the Hall of Fame. And honestly, I loved Brian Urlacher but I don’t much care if he gets into Canton on the first or fifth try. (I’ll be much more passionate when this conversation moves to Charles Tillman and Devin Hester – both of whom I believe fundamentally changed the NFL.) Nevertheless, tonight Urlacher will find out his fate when it comes to the first ballot. Good luck, BU.

Administrative Note: This will be the first of 300 columns with the same headline.

When the 2021 NFL Hall of Fame Class is announced, Charles Tillman’s name should be on the list.

It’s not going to happen. Tillman spent his career being thought of as just a local hero even though he played in a major media market on a team that regularly had one of the best defenses in the NFL. While Tillman was one of the best players in the NFL, he was never really recognized for it.

Charles Woodson is a lock to be on that list. Tillman was a better player.

Woodson was most known for his ability to take the ball away, but he wasn’t necessarily better at that than Tillman. Woodson had a combined 98 interceptions and forced fumbles in 254 games. Peanut had 82 in 168 games. If you were to average that out to a 16 game season, Tillman would’ve averaged nearly eight per season, compared to around six for Woodson.

Woodson had more interceptions, but even there the difference isn’t great. Woodson averaged 4.1 interceptions per 16 games, while Tillman was at 3.6. While he could take the ball away, Woodson wasn’t nearly as good in coverage as Tillman was (the Packers typically put Tramon Williams on the other team’s best receiver).

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