The NFL has announced its final All Century team. The full list below, but a few notes first.

1) The player with the shortest career was Gale Sayers (6 years, 68 games).

2) The player with the longest career was Adam Vinatieri (24 years, 365 games).

3) The Lombardi Packers had 12 or 13 Hall of Fame players (in addition to a Hall of Fame coach, of course), depending on whether you want to include Emlen Tunnell.  The great safety played with the Giants from ’48 to ’58, but finished his career with 3 years in Green Bay.  The last game of his career came, as a backup, in the first championship victory for Green Bay.  Tunnell made the #NFL100 team, but he’s not thought of as a Lombardi Packer.

In fact, other than the coach, Forrest Gregg was the only of the 12 Hall of Fame players on those great Packers teams to make the All-Century team.  That’s…. interesting, to say the least.

4) What do Ronnie Lott, Brett Favre, and Ed Reed have in common?  They are the only players on the team to play for the Jets.  Lott was there in  ’93 and ’94, Favre in ’08, and Reed in ’13.  Joe Namath, Don Maynard, Joe Klecko, and Curtis Martin are probably the best four Jets in history, but I don’t think any were all that close to making this team.  Martin and Klecko weren’t even finalists at their position.

5) The Jets were the least-represented team on the #NFL100, at least among teams that have been around for awhile.

• The Jaguars and Panthers entered the NFL in 1995.  Combined, the teams have only one player-season — Reggie White in 2000 with Carolina.
• The Jets began playing pro football in 1960, but have only the four player-seasons mentioned above.
• The Saints have only five player-seasons: three from Doug Atkins and two from Earl Campbell, in both cases at the end of those players’ careers.
• The Texans have six, with Reed playing there in 2013 and Shane Lechler there from ’13 to ’17.
• The Bengals have 13, all coming from Anthony Munoz.  Every other team has at least 20.

6) The 1963-1966 Colts had 6 players make the All-Century team: QB Johnny Unitas, RB (and receiver) Lenny Moore, WR Raymond Berry, TE John Mackey, OG (and tackle) Jim Parker on offense, and DE Gino Marchetti on defense.  All six were on the Colts all four years other than Marchetti, who retired in ’65 and then returned for a final season in ’66.  In addition, those Colts teams also had Bob Vogel at LT, who was at the start of his 5-time Pro Bowl career.  And while Mackey entered the league in ’63, the Colts also had another Hall of Fame in Art Donovan until ’61, when Unitas, Moore, Berry, Parker, and Marchetti were still with Baltimore.

Those ’56 to ’63 Colts had a ridiculous amount of talent.

7) 1967 (Willie Lanier and Jan Stenerud in Kansas City, Ken Houston in Houston, Alan Page in Minnesota, and Gene Upshaw in Oakland) and 1983 (Eric Dickerson in Los Angeles, John Elway and Dan Marino in Denver and Miami, Bruce Matthews in Houston, and Darrell Green in Washington) each brought 5 top 100 players into pro football. That’s the most of any season. A lot of seasons had zero players, but 1992 and 1993 were the rare back-to-back seasons with zero players. The 1992 draft, in particular, was devoid of top-level talent.

The graph below shows how many of the All-Century players were active in each season.  The peak was 1971, with 28.

And finally, here’s the full list.