Is Art Monk a Hall of Famer? Part Three – Career Peaks

This was originally published on January 31, 2006

Back to Part Two: The Case for Art Monk – Career Numbers

There are two levels of greatness in sports. There are the guys who have long productive careers, and end up with great numbers. Then on the other hand, there are players who dominate for a few years and have a huge peak level at one point in their career. If you have both a solid peak and longevity, you’d usually become a Hall of Fame player. Often these players who have the huge couple of years overshadow the players who have the long periods of being great. Just today on a baseball website, I was reading that John Olerud actually had a more valuable career than Mark McGwire. You’d never imagine that to be the case, but that’s what the numbers show.

Some of the Hall of Fame voters consider Monk to be an Olerud type player. But are those assertions correct? Did other Hall of Fame receivers have a higher career peak than Monk? Let’s take a look:

Unadjusted Numbers

How do you define a career peak? In baseball it’s often considered to be 5-7 years, but since football careers are much shorter, we’ll take anywhere from 3-5 years. Since we are using the unadjusted numbers (adjusted numbers are used below), we’ll stick with the receivers who played in the 70s and 80s. We’ll also exclude Largent, as yesterday article placed him in top tier of the class and a sure fire pick. Largent also didn’t really have a peak; he was really good and consistent for 10 seasons.

And again, but this time averaged out per season:

Like with everything we’ve presented in these articles, Monk stands up to the pack. He clearly has better numbers than Biletnikoff and Swann. I’d also give him a smaller edge over Stallworth and Joiner, and mark him slightly behind Lofton.

These numbers also show the Olerud/McGwire debate between Monk and Irvin. Irvin’s peak numbers undoubtedly surpass Monk’s by a good margin. One note though, Monk did enjoy a 2nd smaller peak later in his career. From 1988-1991, Monk’s career rebounded. In fact if it wasn’t for time missed due to injury and strike in 1987, Monk would have had a Largent-like run of 8 consecutive strong seasons.

It’s quite odd that the debates for this year’s Hall of Fame treat Monk and Irvin as if they were contemporaries. Monk’s career ran much more parallel to Lofton than it did to Irvin. Lofton’s run began in 1978, 2 years before Monk, while Irvin’s career began 8 years after Monk’s debut. The huge surge in receiving numbers came well after Monk’s best days were behind him.

Adjusted Numbers

After making the adjustments (explained in yesterdays update), here are Monk’s stats from 1984-1986:

Is there anything needed to say? The guy averaged 115 catches, 1350 yards and 5 touchdowns in those seasons. Add to that, a 98 catch season in 1989, and 4 more seasons of at least 80 catches, and you have yourself a no-brainer right? You’d think so. Here are Monk’s year by year stats in 2005 numbers:

Now let’s compare to the competition as shown above:

And again on a per season average:

Yes, once again Monk is in the top half of these receivers. In fact, he clearly has better numbers than anyone other than Irvin and Lofton and even in those cases he surpasses both in receptions by a long shot.

The numbers bear it out, Monk’s career peak matches or exceed the majority of the players already enshrined in the Hall. We can rule out this argument for exclusion.

Continuing on from yesterday article, when we listed the modern era HOFers and 2005 finalists in tiers, does today’s research change anything? The peak numbers clearly help the case of Michael Irvin. He had the top peak performance of any receiver we went through today. James Lofton and Art Monk further establish themselves as solid Hall Of Fame players as well. Biletnikoff drops the bottom the 2nd tier, while Joiner moves to the top of the 3rd tier, with Swann continuing to be the weakest link by far.

The Best of the Best
Lance Alworth
Charley Taylor
Steve Largent

Solid Hall of Famers
Michael Irvin
James Lofton
Art Monk
Paul Warfield
Fred Biletnikoff

The Tough Calls
Charlie Joiner
John Stallworth
Lynn Swann

So that brings us to one final criticism of Monk: lack of big game performance. Tomorrow, we’ll look at Monk’s performance in the playoffs as compared to the other players and see what we can find.

Continue to Part Four: The Case for Art Monk – Playoffs and The Reception Record