hawknation2016":1o636vqh said:
I put Bowman and Chancellor in the same category. Certainly deserving of being in the conversation, but because of injuries and the appearance of having lost their dominant ways, people view them as being on the downward slide of their careers and not having done enough already to achieve Hall of Fame status.
Bowman had a good year and racked up more tackles than anyone, but even with all those tackles, he was not the dominant force he was pre-injury. He was not defending the pass nearly as well as he had been before the injury. His passes defended were way down in 2015. He basically substituted truly dominant play in all phases of the game for a large tackle total.
Comments about last year are fair...
...but that was also his FIRST year back after the injury and he got stronger and stronger as the year wore on. It was taking him a few hours to prep for gametime last year as the knee was still giving him problems. He was also noticeably hesitant cutting on that knee and didn't appear to be fully confident it would hold up.
Those issues are history. He isn't having problems with the knee at all now and the 49ers were confident enough in his health that they just added four years to his contract and gave him a sizable raise with 3 full years remaining on his contract.