The Pro Football Hall of Fame on Friday announced that Bobby Beathard, former Redskins general manager, has been named a contributor finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2018.
Bobby Beathard has earned every bit of attention that has come his way.
After being inducted as the 49th member of the Redskins' Ring of Fame last fall, the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Friday announced that Beathard has been named a contributor finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2018.
Beathard was selected by a five-member group from a rotating nine-member subcommittee of the Selection Committee.
Like modern-era candidates, Beathard must earn a minimum of 80 percent of the Hall of Fame Selection Committee's vote. They will meet on Feb. 3, 2018 – one day before Super Bowl LII in Minnesota – to consider which of the finalists will be selected for the Hall of Fame's next class of inductees.
Beathard originally entered the NFL working in various capacities with the Kansas City Chiefs, Atlanta Falcons and Miami Dolphins before joining Washington as the team's general manager on Feb. 24, 1978.
Over the course of the next 11 seasons, Beathard's Redskins accumulated a 105-63 regular season record. The team's winning percentage of .625 was tops in the NFC and second-best in the NFL.
During that time, the Redskins also collected the league's best postseason record, going 11-3 in the playoffs with three Super Bowl appearances and two titles. The Redskins would win a third Super Bowl after the 1991, with many of the players on that roster brought in by Beathard.
Beathard was in constant pursuit to collect the best possible talent available, leaving no stone unturned.
With a passion for talent evaluation, Beathard spent week after week scouting for players that could fit Washington's roster.
"I'd…come in [to Redskins Park] Monday and look at the film with the coaches and then I'd be on the road and get back Friday," Beathard said last year. "I had an agreement with the owner that I would come back. I didn't stay out for college games, because we'd always get the film in those days and tapes later of those games so we could review them more closely rather than watching six players in a game when you don't get to re-run it when you're there live."
Beathard also used each and every round of the NFL Draft to find players that could come in and contribute in some capacity.
"Well my philosophy was always, when we go out to the college and look at the tapes, the agreement we had with our coaches was once we draft these guys forget the round number," Beathard said. "When they all come from training camp you treat them the same like they're all first rounders and we would just evaluate the players. Like Darrell Green, for example. We had him way higher than the last pick in the draft, last pick in the first round, but we were worried about somebody taking him. But at the same time, we are also thinking his size would keep a lot of teams away from him and it did."
In the last three years, Bill Polian, Ron Wolf and Eddie Debartolo Jr. have been enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame through the contributors route.
