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By all accounts Dick LeBeau is an outstanding man. There's little debate that he's also an outstanding coach. And with 62 interceptions, he also was a good cornerback as well. On Saturday he'll find out if that's enough to get him into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As a Steelers fan, it's hard not to root for LeBeau to get the nod, but Pro Football Reference has spelled out a pretty strong case for why he shouldn't be getting a bust in Canton.
The whole P-F-R post is worth reading, but the simple summary is that LeBeau was a good, but not great cornerback throughout his career. He was never a first-team All-Pro cornerback and he was a second-teamer only twice. If you look at cornerbacks who played during LeBeau's time, Dick Grayson had four first-team All-Pro appearances (although his were as a member of the AFL) and Cornell Green and Bobby Boyd each had three. None of them are in the Hall of Fame.
Green and Grayson each had more Pro Bowl appearances than LeBeau as well. LeBeau's best argument for making the Hall of Fame as a player is that he has 62 interceptions, which was third most in league history when he retired and is still ninth on the all-time career leader list.
But as P-F-R points out, LeBeau's interception numbers weren't that unusual in the 1960s and 1970s when quarterbacks threw a lot more bombs and a lot more interceptions. And playing on the other side from Hall of Fame cornerback Lem Barney, teams didn't have a whole lot of choice but to throw LeBeau's way.
If LeBeau's case isn't made as a player, maybe his coaching career can be enough to convince voters, even though he is supposed to be voted on for his playing career.
But as P-F-R points out, the Bengals' defense was below average during LeBeau's first stint as defensive coordinator. When he took over the Steelers defensive coordinator job, the Steelers defense was quite good, but it was also quite good under the preceeding defensive coordinator Don Capers. Then there was a relatively disastrous stretch as the Bengals defensive coordinator and eventually head coach before he had an excellent decade as assistant head coach in Buffalo and defensive coordinator in Pittsburgh.
It would be hard for anyone to root against LeBeau getting into the Hall of Fame--his players in Pittsburgh love him so much that they call him "Coach Dad." But it's also hard to argue that there aren't more deserving players who are waiting for the call from Canton.
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