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The Pro Football Hall of Fame welcomed another seven men to football immortality over the weekend. And with the enshrinement of luminaries like Andre Johnson, Dwight Freeney, Patrick Willis, and Devin Hester came an avalanche of statistics serving to prove why each of them deserves to have a bronze bust residing permanently in Canton, Ohio.
For the 378 figures in the Hall, their bodies of work are- quite literally- etched in stone, frozen forever even as current players in today’s league race to amass higher and gaudier totals in a game constantly evolving to be ever more exciting.
Most of the stats of yesteryear will eventually be eclipsed, the records surpassed at some point. But numbers don’t tell the full story. Just ask Troy Aikman, who acknowledged last week that he left plenty of personal stats on the table during his highly-decorated run with America’s Team.
The legendary Cowboys quarterback earned his gold jacket in his first year of eligibility, in 2006. At the time, only Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw had more Super Bowl rings as a quarterback than Aikman’s three. That last one came in 1996, however, and there’s an entire generation of football fans who know Aikman only as an award-winning broadcaster, not one of the winningest quarterbacks the game has ever seen.
In an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show last week, Aikman looked back on the Cowboys’ 94 regular-season wins with him at the helm (and then 11 more in the postseason) as being far more meaningful to him than passing yards or touchdown throws.
“Throughout my career, anyone who looks at my stats would say, ‘Gosh, how did this guy even get onto the field and how did he get into the Hall of Fame?’” he told McAfee. “But I felt that throughout my career, it was really about winning. And I was proud of that. I was proud that we won. I was proud that after 12 years in the NFL, I was able to win three Super Bowls. And in doing that, the way in which we played, I sacrificed some numbers. But when it was all said and done, I was given and bestowed the greatest individual honor that you can have, and that is to go into the Hall of Fame.”
To be sure, Aikman would have had far more impressive individual stats had Emmitt Smith- the league’s all-time rushing king- not been in the backfield right behind him for nearly his entire tenure. That dual-threat offense, of course, is what allowed the Cowboys to have unprecedented success as a team.
What we’re left with now, though, is a record book that can feel skewed by the recent proliferation of the passing game, even by quarterbacks whose place in the sport’s overall history is questionable at best.
Compare where Aikman ranked in six key quarterback categories- top 20 in five of them- when he walked away with where he stands now, and he does almost seem like an also-ran.
| Troy Aikman | Career total | All-time rank at retirement | All-time rank currently |
| Passing yds | 32,942 | 20th | 44th |
| Touchdown passes | 165 | 37th | 80th |
| Completions | 2,898 | 10th | 34th |
| Completion pct | 61.5% | 4th | 55th |
| Passer rating | 81.6 | 16th | 81st |
| Wins | 94 | 12th | 27th |
And that’s how poring over stats in a vacuum can get problematic in a hurry.
No one in their right mind would argue that Aikman’s talents pale in comparison to Ryan Tannehill, Jay Cutler, Matt Hasselbeck, Andy Dalton, Derek Carr, or Kerry Collins, just to name a few of the 43 passers in history who currently precede Aikman on the all-time yardage list.
Jared Goff, Patrick Mahomes, and Dak Prescott should also surpass Aikman this season, yet only Mahomes’s status as a future Hall of Famer would seem to be a lock.
And that, Aikman knows first-hand, is because of the infinitely more important stat, the one that no player can increase by more than one each time his team takes the field.
“There’s a lot of people,” he continued to McAfee last week, “that talk about winning: ‘It’s all about winning.’ But as soon as they don’t get their numbers, they’re the first ones to bitch, and I don’t have any tolerance for it. I’m proud of the fact that I got in and yet sacrificed considerably from a statistical standpoint.”