There are two distinct images for us with Joe Burrow in 2020.

The first is the QB leading LSU to a National Championship, which he punctuated with a celebratory stogie.

The second was in his parent’s humble home, where he was drafted #1 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Burrow felt like a a special player right away, and this was despite the cautiousness of the Bengals faithful who have dealt with a lot of suffering from disappoint Quarterbacks. Burrow only won two Games as a rookie, and was injured with a torn ACL and PCL during it. This still did not make it a bust year for Burrow, who showed why he was taken number one.

Bouncing back in 2021, Burrow won the AP Comeback Player of the Year, throwing for 4,611 Yards, 34 Touchdowns and an NFL-leading 70.4 Pass Completion Percentage. Burrow led the Bengals to their third Super Bowl appearance, and though they did not win, it was their best performance to date.

Burrow had another great year in 2022 (4,475 Yards & 35 TD) where he hdded a Pro Bowl and took Cincinnati to the AFC Conference Game.  The QB ronly appeared in 10 Games in 2023 due to injury, though was very good when healthy 

Going into 2024, the Bengals have a top-five Quarterback and a man who can give them their first title, especially if he remains healthy.

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we here at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the 50 of each major North American sports team. That being said, we have existing Top 50 lists out and we always consistently look to update them when we can and based on necessity. As such, we are very happy to present our post 2022 revision of our top 50 Carolina Panthers.

As for all of our top 50 players in football we look at the following:

1. Advanced Statistics.

2. Traditional statistics and how they finished in the National Football League.

3. Playoff accomplishments.

4. Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

Last year, Carolina had a bad year, though showed promise in the second half of the season. Nevertheless, the we have one new entry and one elevation.

As always, we present our top five, which had no changes.

1. Steve Smith

2. Cam Newton

3. Luke Kuechly

4. Julius Pepper

5. Ryan Kalil

You can find the entire list here.

Brian Burns, who is now a two-time Pro Bowler, enters the list at #41.

Offensive Tackle, Taylor Moton, moves to #45 from #50.

We welcome your input and comments and as always, we thank you for your support.

The Carolina Panthers have not had much to smile at from 2018 to 2023, but they had a ray of sunshine in Brian Burns.

The former Florida State Seminole joined the Panthers as a First Round Pick in 2018 (18^th Overall) and started five games as a rookie. A starter in 2020, Burns became one of the NFC South’s best pass rushers, collecting Pro Bowl nods in 2021 and 2022, with his best numbers coming in 2022 with 12.5 Sacks/17 Tackles for Loss/22 Quarterback Hits,  After another solid 2023, Burns was franchise tagged, and then traded to the New York Giants leaving behind 46 Sacks, 59 TFL and 95 Quarterback Hits.

After years of observing the Pro Football Hall of Fame process, and all Hall of Fames for that matter, one thing has always felt clear to me; Halls should begin 25 years after an institution begins. This alleviates any backlog that could happen, and often when discussions of the PFHOF occur, a common thread is how many great players have fallen through the cracks.

So… What if the PFHOF had their first class in January of 1946?

Invites went out to people who have displayed knowledge and passion of football’s history, and we followed the same pattern of the current PFHOF electoral process.

A Preliminary Vote with 130 players whose playing career ended by 1940. We are also following the structure in that players have 20 years of eligibility, and if they do not make it into the Hall, they are relegated to the Senior Pool.

Each voter is asked to select 25 names from the preliminary list, with the top 25 vote getters named as Semi-Finalists.

A week later, the voters are asked to pick 15 names from the 25 Semi-Finalists, and a week after, they will pick five from the remaining 15. We will continue this process weekly until we catch up to the current year.

27 people participated in the 1946 Preliminary Vote which yielded the following result:

This is for the “Modern Era”

*Bold indicates they advanced to the Semi-Finals:

This is for the “Senior Era”

*Bold indicates they advanced to the Semi-Finals:

Next Saturday, we will be posting the results of the Semi-Finalists.

Thank you to all who contributed, and if you want to be a part of this project, please let us know!