The Pro Football Hall of Fame will hold twin induction ceremonies this weekend – and welcome a new set of triplets.
No Buffalo Bills are going in this time, though coach Tom Flores was briefly with the team as a player, but echoes of three Bills who are already there will be in the air.
The ceremonies will come Saturday, when the Covid-delayed Class of 2020 is inducted, and Sunday, when the Class of 2021 enters. Edgerrin James is among those who will go in on Saturday and Peyton Manning on Sunday. They will join Marvin Harrison, their Indianapolis Colts teammate, who entered with the Class of 2016.
Collectively, that trio will be the sixth set of Hall of Fame triplets – meaning a quarterback, a running back and a wide receiver who played so surpassingly well together that they all made their way to Canton, which is Ohio’s version of Valhalla.
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One of the other sets, of course, is the Bills’ Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed. What the Buffalo and Indy triplets have in common is Bill Polian, the general manager who drafted two-thirds of each set. Oh, and he, too, is in the Hall of Fame.
Joe Horrigan, a son of South Buffalo, isn’t in the Hall, but he worked there for 42 years. He retired as executive director in 2019 and will be at Saturday’s and Sunday’s ceremonies. The Class of 2020 is the last one he worked on before his retirement. He simply couldn’t miss it.
“I thought I was going to escape it all this year, but then I only got in deeper,” Horrigan says. “This is my last class coming in, the Class of 2020, the centennial class. That was my project, and I wanted to see it all the way through. And the next thing I knew, I’m doing panel discussions and radio shows and all sorts of fun stuff.”
Triplet players who make the Hall are stars in their own right, and their individual greatness was enhanced by playing together. Here are the soon-to-be-six sets:
- Baltimore Colts: Johnny Unitas, quarterback; Lenny Moore, running back; and Raymond Berry, wide receiver.
- Pittsburgh Steelers: Terry Bradshaw, quarterback; Franco Harris, running back; and wide receivers Lynn Swann and John Stallworth (which makes them quadruplets).
- Dallas Cowboys: Troy Aikman, quarterback; Emmitt Smith, running back; and Michael Irvin, wide receiver. (As we know, the Dallas triplets beat the Buffalo triplets in a couple of Super Bowls.)
- Buffalo Bills: Kelly, Thomas and Reed. That set of triplets becomes quadruplets, too, if we count James Lofton, a Hall of Famer who split the prime of his receiving career between the Bills and the Green Bay Packers.
- St. Louis Rams: Kurt Warner, quarterback; Marshall Faulk, running back; and Isaac Bruce, wide receiver.
- Indianapolis Colts: Manning, James and Harrison.
Polian drafted Manning and James in Indy; Harrison was already on hand. The Bills drafted Kelly in 1983; Polian was named the team’s pro personnel director a year later. Then he drafted Reed in the fourth round, in 1985; signed Kelly from the United States Football League, in 1986; and drafted Thomas in the second round, in 1988.
“How good is an Andre Reed going to be without a Jim Kelly?” Horrigan says. “We don’t know. We’re never going to know. He probably would have been just the same, but the fact is he fit perfectly with Jim. The same way with Marvin Harrison: He fit perfectly with Peyton. Great quarterbacks find a way to find their guys. Thurman, Jim, and Andre were fortunate enough to have a fourth in James Lofton, too.
“Their offenses, whether it’s Peyton throwing deep all the time or Jim running the no-huddle, they were able to play their game. And that’s what those running backs did. Thurman and Edgerrin are guys who weren’t one-dimensional. They were multifaceted – and perfect for those teams in their time.”
Horrigan’s first induction ceremony came in 1977, the year he joined the Hall. The twin inductions this weekend will run the number he has attended to 44. Does it ever get old?
“No, never,” he says. “Every class is brand new. I knew a lot of these guys when they were players, especially the Bills. So every year I’m excited about it. You get all these Hall of Famers together, and it’s fun being around them, because they love being around each other.”
