The Pittsburgh Steelers are now into the regular season, following the most unique offseason in the NFL since at least World War II. While it didn’t involve a player lockout, teams still did not have physical access to their players, though they were at least able to meet with them virtually.
Even training camp looked much different from the norm, and a big part of that was the fact that there will be no games along the way to prepare for. Their first football game of the year was to be the opener against the New York Giants.
As the season progresses, however, there will be a number of questions that arise on a daily basis, and we will do our best to try to raise attention to them as they come along, in an effort to both point them out and to create discussion
Questions like, how will the players who are in new positions this year going to perform? Will the rookies be able to contribute significantly? How will Ben Roethlisberger look—and the other quarterbacks as well? Now, we even have questions about whether or not players will be in quarantine.
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: Whom will the Steelers select as part of the Hall of Honor class of 2020, and how many will be included?
This will be the fourth year since the Steelers introduced their Hall of Honor at Heinz Field, as a means of paying respects to some of the great men and women who have been a part of the organization, from players and coaches to owners, scouts, general managers, and contributors of other sorts.
The first Hall of Honor class in 2017 featured a couple dozen names, since, obviously, they would have an immense backlog when they’re just starting out. However, the class of 2018 featured five members, and last year only four. I would expect that there would be no more than four this year, and perhaps fewer.
One name that should be a no-brainer is Troy Polamalu, fitting that he would go into the Hall of Honor in the same year that he was part of the Hall of Fame class—even if his enshrinement was postponed because of the pandemic.
There are plenty of names of defenders from the 2000s era to choose from, and I would expect at least one of them will be included aside from Polamalu, simply because of the quantity of players. That includes the entire starting defensive line and James Farrior as well.
You can view the list of current enshrinees here and decide for yourself who is most deserving. For players, they must be retired for at least three seasons, but there is no such distinction for coaches and contributors, so technically somebody like Kevin Colbert could be included.
