HOUSTON -- Terrell Davis' professional football career was always more about quality than the number of calendar pages that were flipped along the way.
Time was not the ultimate judge of what Davis did on a football field, championships were. Davis became the fifth Broncos player to be selected for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, and he was chosen by the Hall's Board of Selectors on the power of his work in the most successful period of the team's history.
The Peyton Manning Denver Broncos won four consecutive AFC West titles and went to two Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl 50 last February. But the Davis-led Broncos won 39 games in a three-year span to go with Super Bowl wins to close out the 1997 and 1998 seasons.
Davis' career was cut short by knee troubles that began with an injury in an October 1999 game. He played 78 regular-season games and eight playoff games, a resume longer than six running backs already in the Hall of Fame, but lack of longevity was still held over him in his candidacy for the Hall of Fame.
This was Davis' fourth time as a Hall finalist and likely a pivotal year for him in the process given the pedigree of players who will become eligible over the next three years. Randy Moss, Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher will be among those players who will be newly eligible for the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018. In 2019, Tony Gonzalez, Champ Bailey and Ed Reed will be eligible for the first time and Troy Polmalu will lead the new list in 2020.
Given that only five modern-era players or coaches can be selected for enshrinement each year, the hill for players who've been finalists in recent years could get a little steeper. But quality won the day for Davis on Saturday.
He's quality in the fact he is one of only three non-quarterbacks in NFL history to have won both an MVP award and a Super Bowl MVP award. Davis and Jim Brown are the only running backs in league history to average more than 100 yards rushing per game in a career in regular-season and postseason games combined.
Davis' postseason rushing average was 142.5 yards per game -- highest in league history by a longshot. He had seven 100-yard rushing games in the postseason and the Broncos were 7-0 in those games.
Davis was his absolute best in the biggest moments, which is something that the likes of Mike Shanahan, John Elway, Shannon Sharpe, Ed McCaffrey and every other teammate who ever put on Broncos helmet alongside Davis have reaffirmed along the way. Elway concisely said it, over and over again: "I know what a Hall of Fame player looks like ... and T.D. is a Hall of Fame player."
The Broncos were 37-4 when Davis rushed for at least 100 yards, a 90.2 percent win rate. Only three other Hall of Fame running backs had 90-percent win rates in their 100-yard games -- Thurman Thomas, Jim Taylor and Franco Harris.
That is the company Davis kept in his career, but he really had no peer at his position in the postseason. Back-to-back Super Bowl winners are the rarest form of team excellence in league history, and Davis was the engine of the Broncos' championship double dip.
He was a defining player who finally helped put the Super Bowl rings on Elway's fingers after so much title-game disappointment for the Broncos. It didn't happen nearly as quickly as anyone who is close to Davis or wears their Broncos emotions on their sleeves would have liked, but Davis entered the most exclusive club professional football has to offer Saturday.
He joined, as Hall of Famer Deacon Jones has called it so many times, "the only team you can’t be cut from."
Davis is no longer a guy who should be in the Hall of Fame, because he is now a guy who is in the Hall of Fame.