This is a question I have been pondering for several seasons, at least since S23. And it’s something I’ve mentioned in passing, but now, I want to lay out every single statistic and piece of evidence that the Hall of Fame committee might use and find it out definitively, or at least as definitive as I can be while writing this at 6am. I’m not going to try and hide anything here, both the good and the bad will be laid out for all to see. For everything regarding stats, I will be using the most recent sim file available (S26, Week 13). Things might technically change since Hanyadi will play another season in Baltimore (not under my control, though), but I want to cash in on this fat media bonus. So, let’s get started.
Hanyadi is a create from the S18 draft class, but he didn’t actually join the league until Season 19. While this is not unusual, it means a season of ISFL playing time was left on the table for him. In 113 games in the ISFL, Hanyadi has racked up 8505 rushing yards and 67 touchdowns, good for 10th all time and 7th all time respectively. On a per game basis, Hanyadi has 103.89 yards from scrimmage (call it 104) and 0.75 TDs. In those categories, Hanyadi ranks 2nd all time and 4th all time, respectively. (These stats aren’t perfect, but if someone has a correction for me then lemme know. I’ll also include the spreadsheet I used to find stuff like this.)
At 4.3 YPC over his career, Hanyadi is even with Toriki, Reed and Brown at the highest YPC of running backs with a significant number of carries. With 1981 and 2053 carries respectively, they more than triple the number of the next player on that list (Carrasco with only 651 carries). As a true bellcow, having 4.3 YPC is extremely impressive.
He also has 3235 receiving yards and 18 receiving touchdowns, good for 7th all time and 8th all time among running backs. Ranking everything by yards from scrimmage (rushing plus receiving), Hanyadi sits 8th all time with 11740. Keep in mind, Hanyadi played less games than everyone else on that list. Even compared to his fellow classmate Toriki, who’s had a strong career herself with 10769 (good enough to squeak in at 10th all time), Hanyadi is already past her.
In terms of returning, Hanyadi sits at 927 PR yards and 4844 KR yards. His PR average of 11.0 is good for 4th all time among all running backs, and his KR average of 28.7 is good for 3rd all time among running backs and 15th all time. Among running backs, at least, Hanyadi was an elite returner. While he may not measure up to some of the return greats like Lavelle, he’s had a good time in the return game.
In these areas, Hanyadi no doubt would be a Hall of Famer. Even with such a short career, he dominated whenever he was on the field. But with all that out of the way, let’s look at some of the not so nice things about his career, along with one other thing. First of all: drops. They happen. Receivers drop passes all the time, both in the sim and in the actual NFL. Sometimes the ball is just out of reach, sometimes the weather affects their catching ability, sometimes a corner or a safety rocks them hard enough so they can’t hold on. Hanyadi, however, has a ludicrous amount of drops. Like, a historically bad amount of drops. In 113 career games, he has 114 drops. That is very slightly over one drop per game. Only Smallwood, Yates and Mackworthy have more drops than Hanyadi. In terms of per game numbers, Smallwood and Yates have more, but that’s it. His drop problem was chronic, and nothing seemed to save it. His rookie career did inflate this number slightly with a godawful 27 drops in 13 games, but even his MVP campaign in S23 was bad with 21 total drops in 16 games. He could not hold onto the ball, at least in the passing game.
In terms of fumbles, it’s still mediocre, but he gets saved in this regard as most of his fumbles were either recovered by him or the rest of his team. He currently sits at 24 fumbles, which is bad, but only 7 of them have been turnovers.Roughly speaking, he’d lose the football once per season. Again, looking at the top 10 rushers, Ashley Owens is the only one who has him beat in this category with only one single fumble lost in his entire career, so he’s certainly not bad in this regard. However, it seems like he did get lucky in terms of fumbles and got bailed out plenty of times by the rest of his team. He only recovered 9 fumbles, which ones were his own and which ones were from other team mates is something I could find out, but that would take an extremely long time. So I won’t look too deeply into it, at least not here.
The third issue, and this is certainly smaller than the last two but I still feel like it’s important to mention, is his time in Yellowknife. One might ask, “How is this an issue? Of course he spent the majority of his career in Yellowknife, he got drafted there.” Well, it could be argued that Yellowknife inflated his numbers, as evidenced by his time in Arizona and Baltimore. While Yellowknife didn’t have a user OL like Arizona or Baltimore, they certainly had some creative strategies to get players better results and improve win percentages. Nothing illegal, of course, but being stuck at fullback in certain formations did boost his stats in some games. Just look at S23 Week 10 versus Honolulu, he was killing them all day as a fullback. While he has had decent seasons in Baltimore and Arizona, he hasn’t been nearly as good as his time with the Wraiths. This certainly isn’t a huge factor in the verdict (at least in my eyes), but it’s something to talk about nonetheless.
The last thing is something I’m still ashamed about, but it is important and I have to talk about it: my temporary ban. For those of you who are new here or don’t pay attention to the punishment channel, I was banned for about half of Season 24 after some threats I made in one of the league discords. I’ve made peace with everyone involved (I hope) and apologized profusely for my comments, but it’s probably not enough. I’ve done my best to grow from the incident, but it still happened. That won’t be erased, and it’s something that’ll hang over my head until I step away from this league, whenever that happens. I don’t know if the Hall of Fame committee takes into account the user behind the player (I assume they do), but if anything keeps me out of the Hall, it’ll likely be this. The drops and fumbles hurt, but this would be the deathblow.
Coming off of that more somber note, let’s look at general accomplishments, awards, that sort of thing. Let’s start with the awards in the sim: Player of the Game and Player of the Week. Hanyadi has 21 Player of the Game Awards and 7 Player of the Week awards. Compared to Gump, he has less PotG awards but more PotW awards (21 vs. 23, 7 vs. 4). Hanyadi has had plenty of dominant games in his career, and these awards prove it. Looking at ISFL awards starting with Pro Bowls, Hanyadi has attended 5 pro bowls in his career. From S20 to S24, he was a staple of the NSFC pro bowl roster. As a bonus, in S23, he attended as both a running back and a returner. While he hasn’t been back to the pro bowl since S24, that 5 season stretch of attendance is still quite the feat. Of course, we have to talk about RBoTY trophies, which Hanyadi has won 3 different times. He lost the trophy to Reed in his S21 campaign, but in S20, S22 and S23, he was the best running back in the league. On top of that, he would win Offensive Player of the Year twice, being one of only five players in the history of the league to do so. (Technically won it 3 times thanks to some funny voting in S23, but I won’t count that and neither should you. It’s just an ego thing hehe.) And, of course, he would win Most Valuable Player in S23. He was the first non-quarterback since S16 to win it, and the first running back to win it since S13. On top of all of that, he’s the only running back other than Bubba Nuck to win it cleanly. As in, he didn’t split the vote with anyone else. On top of all that, he won a ring with Yellowknife (the only major thing missing from his resume award wise) in S23 and he led the league in rushing yards back in S22. Last but not least, he won Offensive Performance of the Year in S23 with his demolition of the Hahalua in Week 10 that I talked about earlier. All in all, his awards case is loaded. He’s won everything a running back could possibly win (save Returner of the Year). He’s absolutely killed it in this regard. And before I forget, he’s also made it onto the 25th Anniversary All-ISFL Team, a roster that was loaded with Hall of Fame running backs from top to bottom.
The last thing I want to talk about is more theoretical than everything else we’ve talked about so far, but it’s a fun thought experiment nonetheless (also helps inflate my word count while also staying on topic). What if Hanyadi had played 16 games throughout his entire career? In S19, S20, S21 and S22, he was stuck with the 13 game schedule. In those 4 seasons, Hanyadi missed out on 12 potential games. If we were to give him his average stats for those 12 games, he’d have an extra 1248 yards and 9 touchdowns. With these extra yards, he’d be only 12 short of breaking the 13,000 yards from scrimmage barrier and would tie Gump with 94 career touchdowns.
That’s fun and all, but let’s get to the actual question I posed in the title of this article: Is Mathias Hanyadi a Hall of Fame running back? He’s had an incredible career and far surpassed any expectations I had of him after that S18 draft. Without question, he is the best running back in Wraiths history (so far.) He holds every single rushing record on the team, won many awards with them and helped bring the team it’s second ring in it’s long and storied history. Everyone in Yellowknife can agree with me on that one.
In terms of the ISFL Hall of Fame, that question gets tougher. Statistically, he’s there. Despite a relatively short career compared to guys like Gump and Torenson or older players like Mackworthy and Taylor, he’s been the complete package on offense. He’s done everything you could ask from a running back and more. However, he’s been mediocre on both Arizona and Baltimore statistically speaking, his drops issue as I’ve said before is extremely bad and the less said about my incident, the better. I cannot predict how the Hall of Fame committee votes, and I’m sure they’re going to be able to dig up more advanced stats than I can. I could talk about first down percentage, longest runs and receptions, I could talk about his personal records and how they stack up against everyone else’s, There is a lot more I could mention here. And there are undoubtedly things I missed that others might be able to point out.
But, to answer the question, I think that Hanyadi will end up in the Hall of Fame when his time comes, if and only if my incident back in S24 doesn’t become the deciding factor. Again, I don’t know how the committee would decide on something like that. I have done my best to clean up my behavior and even managed to get a job in the ISFL again, so I hope they can let bygones be bygones and put Hanyadi in the Hall.
But what do you guys think? Since I’m a poll freak, I have another one where you can give your quick thoughts on whether he makes it or not. If I got anything wrong in the article, please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix everything. If you’ve read this far, thank you, and have a nice day!
The poll
Spreadsheet
Thanks to shady for making the initial spreadsheet many seasons ago now.
Hanyadi is a create from the S18 draft class, but he didn’t actually join the league until Season 19. While this is not unusual, it means a season of ISFL playing time was left on the table for him. In 113 games in the ISFL, Hanyadi has racked up 8505 rushing yards and 67 touchdowns, good for 10th all time and 7th all time respectively. On a per game basis, Hanyadi has 103.89 yards from scrimmage (call it 104) and 0.75 TDs. In those categories, Hanyadi ranks 2nd all time and 4th all time, respectively. (These stats aren’t perfect, but if someone has a correction for me then lemme know. I’ll also include the spreadsheet I used to find stuff like this.)
At 4.3 YPC over his career, Hanyadi is even with Toriki, Reed and Brown at the highest YPC of running backs with a significant number of carries. With 1981 and 2053 carries respectively, they more than triple the number of the next player on that list (Carrasco with only 651 carries). As a true bellcow, having 4.3 YPC is extremely impressive.
He also has 3235 receiving yards and 18 receiving touchdowns, good for 7th all time and 8th all time among running backs. Ranking everything by yards from scrimmage (rushing plus receiving), Hanyadi sits 8th all time with 11740. Keep in mind, Hanyadi played less games than everyone else on that list. Even compared to his fellow classmate Toriki, who’s had a strong career herself with 10769 (good enough to squeak in at 10th all time), Hanyadi is already past her.
In terms of returning, Hanyadi sits at 927 PR yards and 4844 KR yards. His PR average of 11.0 is good for 4th all time among all running backs, and his KR average of 28.7 is good for 3rd all time among running backs and 15th all time. Among running backs, at least, Hanyadi was an elite returner. While he may not measure up to some of the return greats like Lavelle, he’s had a good time in the return game.
In these areas, Hanyadi no doubt would be a Hall of Famer. Even with such a short career, he dominated whenever he was on the field. But with all that out of the way, let’s look at some of the not so nice things about his career, along with one other thing. First of all: drops. They happen. Receivers drop passes all the time, both in the sim and in the actual NFL. Sometimes the ball is just out of reach, sometimes the weather affects their catching ability, sometimes a corner or a safety rocks them hard enough so they can’t hold on. Hanyadi, however, has a ludicrous amount of drops. Like, a historically bad amount of drops. In 113 career games, he has 114 drops. That is very slightly over one drop per game. Only Smallwood, Yates and Mackworthy have more drops than Hanyadi. In terms of per game numbers, Smallwood and Yates have more, but that’s it. His drop problem was chronic, and nothing seemed to save it. His rookie career did inflate this number slightly with a godawful 27 drops in 13 games, but even his MVP campaign in S23 was bad with 21 total drops in 16 games. He could not hold onto the ball, at least in the passing game.
In terms of fumbles, it’s still mediocre, but he gets saved in this regard as most of his fumbles were either recovered by him or the rest of his team. He currently sits at 24 fumbles, which is bad, but only 7 of them have been turnovers.Roughly speaking, he’d lose the football once per season. Again, looking at the top 10 rushers, Ashley Owens is the only one who has him beat in this category with only one single fumble lost in his entire career, so he’s certainly not bad in this regard. However, it seems like he did get lucky in terms of fumbles and got bailed out plenty of times by the rest of his team. He only recovered 9 fumbles, which ones were his own and which ones were from other team mates is something I could find out, but that would take an extremely long time. So I won’t look too deeply into it, at least not here.
The third issue, and this is certainly smaller than the last two but I still feel like it’s important to mention, is his time in Yellowknife. One might ask, “How is this an issue? Of course he spent the majority of his career in Yellowknife, he got drafted there.” Well, it could be argued that Yellowknife inflated his numbers, as evidenced by his time in Arizona and Baltimore. While Yellowknife didn’t have a user OL like Arizona or Baltimore, they certainly had some creative strategies to get players better results and improve win percentages. Nothing illegal, of course, but being stuck at fullback in certain formations did boost his stats in some games. Just look at S23 Week 10 versus Honolulu, he was killing them all day as a fullback. While he has had decent seasons in Baltimore and Arizona, he hasn’t been nearly as good as his time with the Wraiths. This certainly isn’t a huge factor in the verdict (at least in my eyes), but it’s something to talk about nonetheless.
The last thing is something I’m still ashamed about, but it is important and I have to talk about it: my temporary ban. For those of you who are new here or don’t pay attention to the punishment channel, I was banned for about half of Season 24 after some threats I made in one of the league discords. I’ve made peace with everyone involved (I hope) and apologized profusely for my comments, but it’s probably not enough. I’ve done my best to grow from the incident, but it still happened. That won’t be erased, and it’s something that’ll hang over my head until I step away from this league, whenever that happens. I don’t know if the Hall of Fame committee takes into account the user behind the player (I assume they do), but if anything keeps me out of the Hall, it’ll likely be this. The drops and fumbles hurt, but this would be the deathblow.
Coming off of that more somber note, let’s look at general accomplishments, awards, that sort of thing. Let’s start with the awards in the sim: Player of the Game and Player of the Week. Hanyadi has 21 Player of the Game Awards and 7 Player of the Week awards. Compared to Gump, he has less PotG awards but more PotW awards (21 vs. 23, 7 vs. 4). Hanyadi has had plenty of dominant games in his career, and these awards prove it. Looking at ISFL awards starting with Pro Bowls, Hanyadi has attended 5 pro bowls in his career. From S20 to S24, he was a staple of the NSFC pro bowl roster. As a bonus, in S23, he attended as both a running back and a returner. While he hasn’t been back to the pro bowl since S24, that 5 season stretch of attendance is still quite the feat. Of course, we have to talk about RBoTY trophies, which Hanyadi has won 3 different times. He lost the trophy to Reed in his S21 campaign, but in S20, S22 and S23, he was the best running back in the league. On top of that, he would win Offensive Player of the Year twice, being one of only five players in the history of the league to do so. (Technically won it 3 times thanks to some funny voting in S23, but I won’t count that and neither should you. It’s just an ego thing hehe.) And, of course, he would win Most Valuable Player in S23. He was the first non-quarterback since S16 to win it, and the first running back to win it since S13. On top of all of that, he’s the only running back other than Bubba Nuck to win it cleanly. As in, he didn’t split the vote with anyone else. On top of all that, he won a ring with Yellowknife (the only major thing missing from his resume award wise) in S23 and he led the league in rushing yards back in S22. Last but not least, he won Offensive Performance of the Year in S23 with his demolition of the Hahalua in Week 10 that I talked about earlier. All in all, his awards case is loaded. He’s won everything a running back could possibly win (save Returner of the Year). He’s absolutely killed it in this regard. And before I forget, he’s also made it onto the 25th Anniversary All-ISFL Team, a roster that was loaded with Hall of Fame running backs from top to bottom.
The last thing I want to talk about is more theoretical than everything else we’ve talked about so far, but it’s a fun thought experiment nonetheless (also helps inflate my word count while also staying on topic). What if Hanyadi had played 16 games throughout his entire career? In S19, S20, S21 and S22, he was stuck with the 13 game schedule. In those 4 seasons, Hanyadi missed out on 12 potential games. If we were to give him his average stats for those 12 games, he’d have an extra 1248 yards and 9 touchdowns. With these extra yards, he’d be only 12 short of breaking the 13,000 yards from scrimmage barrier and would tie Gump with 94 career touchdowns.
That’s fun and all, but let’s get to the actual question I posed in the title of this article: Is Mathias Hanyadi a Hall of Fame running back? He’s had an incredible career and far surpassed any expectations I had of him after that S18 draft. Without question, he is the best running back in Wraiths history (so far.) He holds every single rushing record on the team, won many awards with them and helped bring the team it’s second ring in it’s long and storied history. Everyone in Yellowknife can agree with me on that one.
In terms of the ISFL Hall of Fame, that question gets tougher. Statistically, he’s there. Despite a relatively short career compared to guys like Gump and Torenson or older players like Mackworthy and Taylor, he’s been the complete package on offense. He’s done everything you could ask from a running back and more. However, he’s been mediocre on both Arizona and Baltimore statistically speaking, his drops issue as I’ve said before is extremely bad and the less said about my incident, the better. I cannot predict how the Hall of Fame committee votes, and I’m sure they’re going to be able to dig up more advanced stats than I can. I could talk about first down percentage, longest runs and receptions, I could talk about his personal records and how they stack up against everyone else’s, There is a lot more I could mention here. And there are undoubtedly things I missed that others might be able to point out.
But, to answer the question, I think that Hanyadi will end up in the Hall of Fame when his time comes, if and only if my incident back in S24 doesn’t become the deciding factor. Again, I don’t know how the committee would decide on something like that. I have done my best to clean up my behavior and even managed to get a job in the ISFL again, so I hope they can let bygones be bygones and put Hanyadi in the Hall.
But what do you guys think? Since I’m a poll freak, I have another one where you can give your quick thoughts on whether he makes it or not. If I got anything wrong in the article, please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix everything. If you’ve read this far, thank you, and have a nice day!
The poll
Spreadsheet
Thanks to shady for making the initial spreadsheet many seasons ago now.
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