The Atlanta Falcons Ring of Honor
November 16th, 2010 | Published in Halls of Fame
Yesterday I added the ability to search the Vintage Football Card Gallery for members of the Atlanta Falcons Ring of Honor. The Falcons established the Ring in 2004; you can see all of the inductees on the Falcons web site.
Atlanta entered the league in 1966, and the Gallery contains cards only up to 1976, so I have cards for only three Ring of Honor members: Claude Humphrey, Tommy Nobis, and Jeff Van Note. They are pictured here on their 1972 Sunoco Stamps.
What’s remarkable about these three players is the amount of time they were with the team. Humphrey played 14 seasons in the NFL, 11 of them with the Falcons. Nobis played 11 seasons, all with the Falcons. And Van Note played 17 seasons, all with the Falcons! None of the three has yet been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, though Humphrey has been a finalist four times. I would like to see one of the old-timers get in before Deion Sanders, who was inducted into the Ring of Honor in 2010. Sanders spent just 5 of his 14 NFL seasons with the Falcons.
I am slowly identifying the members of all of the individual teams’ Halls of Fame in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can see the others I have finished on the Advanced Search page.
