Legendary Green Bay Packers receiver Sterling Sharpe and his former head coach Mike Holmgren are among the 2025 finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but there’s a far more controversial name on the ballot this time around.
Nominated in the Seniors category for players whose careers ended before 1999, former Kansas City Chiefs left tackle Tyrer was a six-time All-Pro and member of the AFL all-decade team for the 1960s while famously protecting quarterback Len Dawson’s blind side. He won three AFL titles and one Super Bowl with the Chiefs franchise before ending his career with Washington in 1974.
Tyrer was considered a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame at the time of his retirement. In fact, every other nonspecialist who was a six-time All-Pro and is eligible for the Hall has been inducted.
But shortly after he was picked as a finalist for the first time, Tyrer shot his wife in a murder-suicide in September 1980.
Tyrer had been dealing with depression and severe headaches that experts now believe might have been CTE, the degenerative brain disease that has been found in many former NFL players who endured repeated blows to their heads in their career. CTE can be diagnosed only posthumously.
Tyrer didn’t get voted in that year and wasn’t nominated again until this year.
Chiefs legend Jim Tyrer (pictured) shot his wife in a murder-suicide in September 1980
Brad Tyrer, son of former Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman Jim Tyrer, believes his father suffered from CTE. And it was this condition, Brad says, that led to the 1980 murder-suicide
Since the tragedy, Tyrer’s son Brad and a doctor who treated the former lineman have both spoken out in his defence, insisting that the murder-suicide was the result of his football career.
‘If it walks like a duck, it quacks, it has webbed feet and water goes off its back, it’s not a zebra: It’s CTE,’ Doug Paone, the doctor who treated Tyrer days prior to the murder-suicide, told the Kansas City Star in 2020. ‘[Tyrer] would be the poster child for CTE.’
Brad Tyrer insists his father was never violent or even angry until he started battling head issues.
‘My dad was just a great guy, an all-around great guy; he didn’t cuss, he didn’t drink, you never saw him raise his voice at my mom, ever,’ Brad said in 2020. ‘It was just that something snapped. And that wasn’t him … It was somebody else who did that.’
Fans, however, have been largely against the idea of enshrining Tyrer in Canton. One called the idea the ‘height of lunacy.’
‘He murdered his wife and then killed himself in 1980,’ the fan wrote. ‘And that is a Hall of Famer?’
‘Jim Tyrer!’ another added. ‘That’s not a story the league wanted dredged up.’
Sharpe was picked as one of three finalists in the Seniors category for players whose career ended in 1999 or earlier, along with Maxie Baughan and Tyrer, in voting results announced Tuesday. Holmgren was picked as the lone finalist in the coaching category and Ralph Hay, who helped found the NFL more than a century ago, was the finalist in the contributor category.
Fans were upset to see Tyrer nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame after the 1980 murder
Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre (4) talks to head Coach Mike Holmgren as time winds down in the NFC Championship Game, a 23-10 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in 1998
Green Bay Packers receiver Sterling Sharpe (84) during a 31-22 loss to the Detroit Lions in 1989
Sterling Sharpe has a word with Packers head coach Mike Holmgren after a playoff game in 1994
The five will be grouped together for voting by the full selection committee in January. Voters can pick three of the candidates, meaning a maximum of three can reach the 80% threshold needed for induction. If no one gets 80 percent of the votes, then the leading vote-getter will get into the Hall.
The selection committee will vote separately on 15 finalists from the modern era , with the 2025 inductees being announced during Super Bowl week in New Orleans in February.
One of Brett Favre’s favorite targets, Sharpe had a short but productive career for the Green Bay Packers from 1988-94. His best season came in 1992, when he became the sixth player to win the receiving triple crown, setting set an NFL record with 108 catches for 1,461 yards and 13 touchdowns.
The brother of Hall-of-Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe, Sterling broke his own record with 112 catches in 1993 and led the NFL with 18 touchdown receptions in his final season, 1994, before a neck injury cut his career short.
Sharpe was a three-time All-Pro and had 595 catches for 8,134 yards and 65 TDs. He trailed only Jerry Rice over his seven-year career in receptions and TD catches.
Baughan was one of the top linebackers in the game in the 1960s for Philadelphia and the Los Angeles Rams. He helped the Eagles win an NFL title as a rookie in 1960 and made nine Pro Bowls in a 10-year span with one first-team and five second-team All-Pro selections.
Sharpe and Baughan were never finalists during their time in the modern era category.
Holmgren was one of the most influential offensive coaches, starting with his time as an assistant on two Super Bowl champion teams in San Francisco.
He went on to coach Green Bay for seven seasons, winning a Super Bowl following the 1996 season. He coached 10 years in Seattle and finished with a 161-111 record, going to three Super Bowls overall.
Holmgren also had a big impact on future coaches, with Andy Reid and Jon Gruden going on to win Super Bowls after working under him in Green Bay.
Hay owned the Canton Bulldogs from 1918-22 and hosted the meeting the led to the formation of the NFL. He beat out a group of semifinalists that included six-time Super Bowl champion owner Robert Kraft.
