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KC Chiefs: Will Shields Set To Enter Hall Of Fame

By Alec Tilson

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Former KC Chiefs offensive guard Will Shields will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio on Saturday, and for Chiefs’ fans, it’s about time.

He’s a Kansas City Chiefs lifer, and after being a finalist in 2012, 2013 and 2014, Will Shields will finally receive football’s highest honor.

Shields is NFL royalty. His football resume is impeccable. If you were asked to create the prototypical NFL guard on paper, you couldn’t make up Will Shields.

He didn’t just show up, either. He was good. Didn’t make mistakes. A freak, freak athlete. The rare intersection of high-level discipline and elite talent.

6-foot 3-inches. 320 pounds. University of Nebraska. Born in Fort Riley, Kansas.

He started 223 consecutive games over his 14-season career with the Chiefs. Con-sec-u-tive. Twelve Pro Bowls from 1995-2006. Two-time First-Team All-Pro selection.

The most career games started – forget consecutive, just games started – by an active offensive lineman in the NFL is 203 games by longtime Lions’ center Dominic Raiola, according to Pro-Football-Reference. Emmit Smith didn’t start as many career games as Will Shields did. Champ Bailey? Twenty fewer starts than Shields. Reggie White is a good one – he started five more games than Shields did.

Again, Shields started 223 games in a row. Four players ever, at any position, have started more consecutive games.

He won the 2003 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award.

I’m looking for any reason Shields wasn’t already a Hall Of Famer and not finding much. Maybe it didn’t help that he played the unrewarding position of offensive guard. Maybe he wasn’t Bruce Matthews, but he dominated the position for a decade.

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Injury, fatigue, family, life happening in general…nothing kept Shields from the football field in 14 seasons.

The man never missed work.

He didn’t just show up, either. He was good. Didn’t make mistakes. A freak, freak athlete. The rare intersection of high-level discipline and elite talent.

He had the feet to pass protect. He had the physical gifts to pull down the line and turn the corner. He had the balance and power to move grown men who didn’t want to be moved, and he understood the game like a quarterback. He blocked ten, fifteen, twenty yards downfield. And that facemask just completed the persona.

Interestingly, Shields probably learned much of that discipline growing up in a military household, according to KCChiefs.com:

"“Of course, being a ‘military brat,’ as they call us, there was one year we looked at it and almost 40 percent of us who were in the Pro Bowl came from military backgrounds,” he said. “It was really unique to know that that discipline sort of set us apart for where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do.”"

Shields will go down among the handful of greatest Chiefs players of all-time. He anchored some of the best offensive lines in history and played his part in several league-leading offenses.

He’ll be enshrined Saturday along with running back Jerome Bettis, linebacker Junior Seau, receiver Tim Brown and several others.

What do you remember about soon-to-be Hall of Fame guard Will Shields?

Next: My All-Time Chiefs Team

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