On June 29, 1983, three children were drowning in a construction pond in Monroe, Louisiana, when Joe Delaney, a 24-year-old Kansas City Chiefs running back, who couldn’t swim, still jumped in to save them. One child managed to get out on his own, another was rushed to the hospital but didn’t make it, while the authorities pulled Delaney and the third child from the water.

That is the story Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio has honored for years, penning a tribute to Delaney every year on June 29. This time, Florio also spoke about him on Pro Football Talk and took his tribute a step further by making a case – take OJ Simpson’s bust out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and put Delaney’s in.

“Would we give our life? Would we live with the guilt that we didn’t?” Florio said, marveling at Delaney’s heroic last moment. “There’s no good way out of that circumstance if you ultimately give your life in the process of trying to save someone else’s. You either give up everything, or you spend the rest of your life thinking you could have done more to try to save somebody who needed that help.

“So he deserves to be remembered. And I’m not going to make the argument he should have a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He only played for two years. I’d give him one. I know which one I’d take out. His name was in the news over the weekend because he’s not going to be on the Wall of Fame at the new stadium in Buffalo. I’d take him out, and I’d put Joe Delaney in.”

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Yes, he only played two years in the NFL. But Joe Delaney deserves a bust in the Hall of Fame.

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12:50 AM · Jun 30, 2026

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OJ Simpson – the man Florio referenced without naming – was inducted into Canton in 1985 on the back of a stellar football career spent mostly with the Buffalo Bills. Simpson became the prime suspect in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. He was acquitted criminally, but a civil jury found him liable and ordered him to pay $35.5M to the victims’ families.

Simpson passed away in April 2024 at the age of 76, maintaining his innocence. As recently as June 2026, Nicole’s former boyfriend, Joseph Perrulli, came forward in a Page Six exclusive interview to share new information from back then, and noted that Simpson’s alleged pattern of abuse was an ‘open secret.’

The Bills have already made their call, though. OJ Simpson was the very first inductee of the Bills’ Wall of Fame in 1980. But when Buffalo opens its new Highmark Stadium, Simpson won’t appear in the Wall of Fame any longer.

“We have made an organizational decision that he is not a fit to display inside our new stadium and family circle,” Pete Guelli, the president of business operations for the Bills, noted in a recent statement.

As for Joe Delaney, he actually has received recognition from Canton, just not a bust. The Pro Football Hall of Fame featured him in its 2025 “Character” exhibit, a display centered on players whose impact extended well beyond their stat lines. Even the Chiefs elected him to their Hall of Fame in 2004, and added his name to the Ring of Honor at Arrowhead Stadium.

In two NFL seasons with the Chiefs – 1,501 rushing yards, four franchise records, and a Pro Bowl as a rookie in 1981 – he had already established himself as a legitimate star before his tragic passing.

Mike Florio’s argument doesn’t pretend the football case is airtight. Two years is just that – two years. But the Hall of Fame has always claimed it stands for something larger than yards and rings – character, impact, and legacy. Right now, it has a bust of a man whose name its franchise has scrubbed from its own walls. Delaney’s jersey sits in a display case down the hall. The building can hold both that Jersey and a bust, but will it?