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Who is the Greg Maddux of football?

This weekend Greg Maddux entered the baseball hall of fame with a 97.2% vote. All I can ask is this: What the hell were the other 2.8% thinking?

I used to pitch, and Greg Maddux has to be one of my all-time heroes. The reason is deceptively simple. It's because - speaking relatively - he had no talent.

Maddux never had a fastball that came even close to the high 90's. Nor an overpowering curve. Nor a particularly special anything, be it a screwball, a knuckler, or even that crazy cutter Mariano Rivera lived off for 20 years. All he had was a genius for doing his job better than anyone thought it could be done.

Every hitter who faced Greg Maddux saw pitches he was physically able to hit. Hell, he never saw a pitch that he WASN'T able to hit. He just couldn't manage to do it. And that was only - ONLY - because Maddux was better at the art of pitching than any player alive could claim to be at the skill of hitting. Between the changes of speed, location, angles, and movement hitters could only stand up there and wave away with a futile mixture of shame and awe. He didn't even bother to throw pitches outside the strike zone!

You know what young pitchers call a complete game victory using less than 100 pitches? It's called a "Maddux." What could possibly be a greater honor than that?

But enough of my gushing. This is a football blog. So here is my question:

Who is the Greg Maddux of football?

Here are the rules:

1. The player must be an all-time great at his position;

2. The player cannot have even one overpowering physical skill. Thus someone like Rod Woodson is out. He may be a GOAT at his position, but he was also a physical genius. That makes him a Randy Johnson, not a Greg Maddux;

3. The player must be one that his peers held in awe, and that his successors will study for at least a generation or two. Polamalu's famous comment about Ed Reed would tend to qualify him, but I think Reed may have also had too much native talent;

4. The player's greatest asset must have been the one that lay between his ears; and

5. Barring injury, that know-how should have led to an extended career with continued success even after the physical skills had gone through a lot of erosion.

FWIW, the defensive players I keep coming up with are linebackers, but that may be a personal bias. Jack Ham would be one, and Mike Singletary another. On the offensive side ... maybe Manning at QB (he who throws so many ugly duck touchdowns)? Mike Webster on the offensive line? Biletnikof at receiver?

I can't wait to hear your thoughts.

P.S. For my fellow boxing fans, is there anyone ever who fits this category better than Bernard Hopkins?

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