Family of KC Chiefs great Jim Tyrer anguished by Pro Football Hall of Fame verdict
As a consensus six-time first-team All-Pro, the left tackle on the AFL All-Time Team and a pillar of three franchise AFL titles and the Super Bowl IV winners, Chiefs great Jim Tyrer by all logic and data was the most decorated Pro Football Hall of Fame candidate among the top 60 senior nominees and the 15 modern-era finalists.
“If you just take the purity of his play … he should be in the Hall of Fame,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said Thursday. “If you kind of exclude the other things, he should be in there. For sure.”
By the “other things” in what Reid called Tyrer’s “unique story,” Reid was diplomatically referring to the shattering end of the 41-year-old Tyrer’s life.
In 1980, he murdered his wife, Martha, and killed himself and thus orphaned four children.
As they were raised by Martha’s parents, the children soon came to understand that the force perpetrating that horror was not their father. It was a monster who’d seized control — a monster that by all evidence today was created by brain trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
That part of the story is vital in many ways, including to any intellectually candid discussion of how Tyrer’s Hall of Fame candidacy should be viewed.
But despite Tyrer’s overwhelming on-field case and the fact that Hall of Fame bylaws somewhat curiously but explicitly state that “off the field or away from the game contributions and/or situations (positive or negative) are not to be considered,” Tyrer did not make the cut on Thursday night in the group of three senior finalists, a contributor and coach who were considered for as many as three spots.
Only one of those five, Sterling Sharpe, was named to the Hall of Fame’s class of 2025. He joins three modern-era candidates: one-time Chiefs defensive lineman Jared Allen, Eric Allen and Antonio Gates.
There’s a lot to unpack here, especially since I’m a voter who sought to advocate for Tyrer.
But no one’s perspectives on this are more significant and poignant than those of the four children who provided to The Star this eloquent statement:
“Having lived as a family under the shadow of uninformed and incorrect narratives about our beloved dad, Jim Tyrer, for decades, we, the children of Jim and Martha Tyrer, are grateful that he was a finalist for the Hall of Fame this year and, importantly, remains a future candidate for the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” they wrote. “Our father’s achievements — nine Pro Bowls, six first-team selections, durability, and pioneering the left tackle position — set him apart even from players whose stories carry less controversial baggage.
“We are proud to say that we never have nor will we ever campaign to the voting committee for any votes or extra consideration as it pertains to our father’s nomination for induction into the Hall of Fame.”
Apparently referring to a pre-vote story by ESPN that at least one voter (Jason Cole) would flout the bylaws and that others had been contacted by another (Bill Polian) urging them not to vote for Tyrer because of the murder-suicide, the family added this:
“We are saddened, however, to learn that a few on the voting committee actively campaigned to fellow voters against our father’s induction in less than honorable ways. Importantly, those efforts can never diminish or take away from our father’s true legacy or our family story of resilience, love, determination, and the power of forgiveness.”
The family also thanked journalist Kevin Patrick Allen for his deep commitment to the upcoming documentary, “Beneath The Shadow,” and the research that “led to new evidence and insights being uncovered; all of which, in the end, will undoubtedly lead to a more public reckoning with our father’s true legacy.”
In fact, it was Allen’s diligence that began to cast light on what was shrouded for so long.
Through the observations of the Tyrer children and interviews with CTE experts and a doctor treating Tyrer in his final days, among many others, Allen illuminated Tyrer’s affliction and substantially advanced the increasing view that CTE was at play.
One of those experts was Chris Nowinski, the co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Federation. Last month, Nowinski told me he was 95% sure Tyrer had CTE — a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive head trauma known to cause aggression, mood swings, depression and paranoia.
And that doctor treating Tyrer, Doug Paone, put it this way when I spoke with him in January:
“If it walks like a duck, it quacks, it has webbed feet and water goes off its back, it’s not a zebra: It’s CTE,” he said. “(Tyrer) would be the poster child for CTE.”
No doubt that helped compel the senior committee to put Tyrer forth as a finalist for the first time since 1981 — his first year of eligibility, when so little was known about the downfall of a man Allen considers “patient zero” of the CTE epidemic.
In a phone interview Thursday night, Brad Tyrer first wanted to express his gratitude to Hall of Famer Jan Stenerud for endorsing his father and to the senior committee for nominating him.
And he felt grateful for all that has come with that — including a meaningful measure of vindication for their father.
“There’s been a lot of discussion around it that I think has gone a long way to maybe change the narrative of who Jim Tyrer was, you know?” he said.
For that matter, the son bears no anger at those who didn’t vote for his father. Or, likely more to the point, voted against him. But he hopes the Hall of Fame will address the issue of those who rejected the prescribed rules.
By phone Thursday night, Allen called the result “heartbreaking” because of the implied message to the Tyrer family.
Heartbreaking, he said, because of seeing “the scab ripped off for them, and to see them have hope and kind of believe that people can finally grasp what they’ve been able to grasp for a long time. And then have that pulled away.”
Whether Tyrer will be nominated again by the senior committee remains to be seen. It’s a grueling process each year, with variables changing all the time as new candidates enter the senior pool. But that committee is understood to have had great conviction about Tyrer.
As for the 49-person committee that ultimately decides, that obviously has X-factors of its own, despite what the rules of governance say.
Beyond anyone who might have openly disregarded what could be compared to jury instructions, though, anyone else could merely have voted for others just to avoid Tyrer or abstain from voting for him without it being exposed as dereliction of duty.
Another school of thought is that some are concerned about the slippery slope of precedent that could be created by inducting Tyrer. What if, the thinking goes, the prospect of CTE becomes an excuse for any violent or criminal behavior?
The problem with that notion is obvious, though: Tyrer, like anyone else, is indeed his own “unique story,” as Reid put it.
The entire work of the committee, as it happens, is to evaluate each case on its own merits.
“I can see people wrestling with it, and right when they get to the hard part of it, they grasp onto the ‘slippery slope,’ or the plausible deniability,” Allen said. “Or right when it gets really hard, when you’re about to make the right decision, people bail out. Because it is so difficult. (But) the kids did not have that choice.
“So when you don’t listen to the kids, that’s enormously insulting.”
While it’s understandable that some might feel or raise what they consider to be a moral objection, that notion reflects a willful disregard of a crucial point.
When I spoke with Paone, he told me he understands that some would question the assumption of CTE and see it as a means of justifying what Tyrer did. His message to them:
“Well, I would just say, ‘Why did he do that?’ Because he gave his entire life to football and damaged his brain. And the brain damage led to what he did.”
He added, “I’m sure that if he never had played offensive line, or had never been a football player, for that matter, he would never have killed his wife and himself.”
That’s something Tyrer’s children have long known and found meaning in.
And if it’s meaningful to them, Nowinski recently told me, “it’s meaningful to me.
“And if his children can forgive him, then I think we as a society can forgive him.”
And we as a selection committee should have embraced him as the most qualified candidate for the 2025 Hall of Fame class — both within the rules as prescribed and, for those who insist, past them because of what we by all logic know now.
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 10:48 PM.