“I think Hall of Fame voters have become more open-minded about players at all positions,” NBC Sports’ Peter King said during a phone conversation last week. “If you look at what has happened at the safety position in the last five or six years (John Lynch, Steve Atwater, Troy Polamalu, Donnie Shell, Ed Reed, Brian Dawkins and Kenny Easley inducted), what you see is that probably for a 20-year period, there might have been one or two pure safeties put in. Now we all realize as a group that we ignored the safety position in a lot of ways, and so there has been a gold rush. The door might be open, who knows, for a LeRoy Butler or whoever. What I mean to say is not only are there people now looking at positions like safety, which was ignored for a long time, I believe specialists are going to get a longer look than they probably did when I first got on the committee — I hate to say it — it’s been 30 years.
