As of February 2025 every HoF eligible player with 10+ Probowls is in the HoF. There are currently 11 players, (including Wilson), with 10+ Probowls who are still playing or who have not yet been retired long enough to become eligible. The 3 players who will become eligible in 2026, (Brees, Fitzgerald, and Witten), will likely become 1st ballot HoF inductees. Of the players with 10+ Probowls Wilson is clearly the weakest potential HoF candidate, but I don't see him being held back for more than a few years.
I'm going to repost something I said last month:
With the offensive explosion of the past few decades, his stats are going to look less and less impressive the further we go, and I think we're going to see some amending in what the voters deem most important. Russ has no MVPs (not even as much as an MVP vote any point), just one second-team All-Pro, and rarely led the league in anything not related to sacks, with one season as the TD leader and one season as the QB rating leader. He's currently 17th all-time in passing yards, and getting to the top 10 would help. He needs 13,674 yards to get there, but unfortunately, #10 is an active player (Stafford). If Stafford doesn't retire after the season, he'll need just 1,552 yards to reach ninth all-time. That means Russ would need 15,226 yards to break into the top 10. How likely is it that he'll even stick around long enough to hit that? What's also interesting in that case would be that the guy he would be passing to get into the top 10 would be Dan Marino. I'd be curious how that would be perceived. One one hand, you can say "Wow, he has more career yards than Marino!", but on the other hand, if Marino is suddenly out of the top 10, with all ten players who would be ahead of him having retired AFTER he did, is career passing yards even going to be considered all that serious anymore? Kind of a double-edged sword.
Russ is 12th in passing TDs and is just 27 TDs out of 10th, which seems doable, but it's Stafford at 10th again, who needs just three more to pass Matt Ryan for ninth. Can he get 31 more passing TDs? He had 16 in 11 games this year. Depends on how much more opportunity he gets. What's good with the TD number at least is that he's not going to get passed any time soon. Mahomes eventually will, but he's 105 back at the moment. The only other player in the current top 50 with anything resembling a realistic chance is Goff, who is 128 TDs behind Russ and would need to average 32 per season over the next four to reach what Russ currently has in the same number of seasons, although just over 21 over the next six to reach what he has by the same age.
He's fifth in QB rating, but given that Drew Brees at #7 is the only player in the top 10 who isn't current, I don't think voters are going to care much about it. Among the others in the top 10 are DeShaun Watson, Dak Prescott, Tua Tagovailoa, and Jimmy Garoppolo.
Fair or not, if Russ were to retire today, I think when his candidacy comes up, we would hear a lot of talk that he was a great player for a team that won a Super Bowl with an all-time defense, but when a championship was put into his hands, he threw an INT on the one-yard line, and he was nowhere near as effective after leaving Seattle. If Pete has a successful tenure with his next team, that probably won't help either.
Best QB in Seahawks history bar none. Unfortunately, I think he's looking at a considerable uphill battle for the Hall of Fame.
