By choosing the late linebacker Sam Mills for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the selection committee corrects an oversight typical with players for small-market teams and rewards one of the most admirable players imaginable.

Neither New Orleans nor Charlotte, North Carolina, were media meccas, to say the least, during the years when Mills lit up the field for the Saints and for the Panthers. Not enough people were fortunate enough to see Mills’s steady, inspirational excellence, and too few know his remarkable story. A man of consummate grit, intelligence, heart, and decency, he was called by longtime head coach Jim Mora “the greatest player I ever coached.”