HOUSTON — Former Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson, a four-time first-team All-Pro selection who rushed for 13,684 yards, was one of five modern-era players voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday.

Joining Tomlinson were two-time MVP quarterback Kurt Warner, longtime Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor, Broncos all-time leading rusher Terrell Davis and five-time All-Pro kicker Morten Andersen.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made the Hall as a contributor, and Kenny Easley, the hard-hitting, versatile safety for the Seahawks during the 1980s, made it as a seniors committee candidate.

The Class of 2017 will be enshrined Aug. 5 in Canton, Ohio.

The five modern-era selections were chosen from a list of 15 finalists. A panel of 46 media members and two current Hall of Famers, James Lofton and Dan Fouts, trimmed that list to 10 and then five Saturday. At that point, the remaining five were then voted in on a yes-or-no basis.

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  LaDainian Tomlinson, the NFL’s fifth-leading rusher who was “almost impossible to defend,” reached the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

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  Kurt Warner stocked shelves at a grocery store and played in the Arena League and NFL Europe, but once he got his NFL chance at 28, he made history.

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  RB Terrell Davis’ Hall of Fame career started with an eye-opening preseason play — on special teams, without a football in his hands.

Jones’ $1.2 billion stadium, dubbed “Jerry World,” set the standard for stadiums to follow it in New Jersey, the Bay Area, Minneapolis, Atlanta and, eventually, Los Angeles. He brokered TV and marketing deals that have helped turn the league into a $13 billion-a-year business, all the while keeping a steady — and, some might agree, entertaining — presence in front of the TV cameras.

The leading scorer in NFL history didn’t know the first thing about American football until he was 17 years old.

Even more ironic than that? Morten Andersen’s claim to fame before he became the most prolific kicker in the history of the sport was team handball.

Andersen was on a path to becoming an Olympic handball player in his native Denmark before he came to America in 1977 for what was supposed to be a 10-month cultural exchange program. But it wasn’t long before Andersen’s host father and the teacher in charge of the foreign-exchange program suggested he try kicking a football, since he had also been a standout soccer player in Denmark. So some of the other kids on the Ben Davis High School football team in Indianapolis took him out to the practice field.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

“One of the players come running to me and said, ‘Coach, you gotta see this kid,'” recalled Bob Wilbur, the former Ben Davis coach whose son was serving as both the quarterback and kicker at the time. “And when we walked out, I think Morten was on the 45- or the 50-yard line, and he put it through about sky high.

“And so my son never kicked again.”

They went to the state semifinals that year before Andersen earned a scholarship to Michigan State and went on to kick for 25 years in the NFL.

Wilbur laughed at the memory of how far Andersen has come. He recalled Andersen running over to the sideline toward him during his first game as instructed after every kickoff, since the other team always sent a blocker after the kicker.

Kicker
6-foot-2, 218 pounds
Michigan State
1982-94 New Orleans Saints, 1995-2000/2006-07 Atlanta Falcons, 2001 New York Giants, 2002-03 Kansas City Chiefs, 2004 Minnesota Vikings

• Played 382 games over 25 seasons
• Scored more than 90 points in 22 seasons; topped 100-point total 14 times in career
• Seven-time Pro Bowler; five-time All-Pro selection
• Falcons and Saints all-time leading scorer
• Dec. 10, 1995, became first kicker to convert three field goals of 50 yards or longer in single game
• Set NFL records for career points (2,544), field goals (565), games (382)
• Named to two NFL All-Decade Teams (1980s and 1990s)

“A couple days after I arrived, I’m standing there in all this garb and all this gear, trying to kick a football, and that’s how it all started,” Andersen said with a laugh of his own. “I think everybody, including myself, was a little surprised at how well it went.”

It didn’t take long, however, for Andersen to develop a taste for the sport.

“The plan initially was to stay here 10 months, then go back home, finish college, continue with sports and live in Denmark. But fate had a whole different idea for me, and I embraced it,” Andersen said. “I was open to this new experience and enjoying getting better at kicking and also the popularity that came with it, I think. It was a cool new sort of thing.

“We showed up in the state semifinals, and there was 10,000 people in the stands. That was unheard of for me. I had never played in front of 10,000 people in my life, coming from a little village in western Denmark. We might have 20 people watching a soccer game or maybe a hundred people watching a team handball game on the select team.”

Andersen said it would mean a lot to that little village in western Denmark if he ever makes it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and that dream was realized on Saturday night when the “Great Dane” finally made the cut for Canton in his fifth year of eligibility. Andersen garnered 80 percent approval from the 48-person Selection Committee.

It will also mean a lot to Bob and Shirley Wilbur, who are now retired and splitting their time between Indianapolis and Florida. And to Andersen’s host parents, Dale and Jean Baker, both of whom have passed away — but both of whom got to see the biggest kick of his life, when his 38-yard overtime field goal sent the Atlanta Falcons to their only other Super Bowl appearance 18 years ago.

Kenny Easley now refers to it as a divorce.

From the time his career ended because of a kidney ailment in 1987 to when the Seattle Seahawks inducted Easley into their Ring of Honor in 2002, he wanted nothing to do with the NFL.

“I had every right to be angry,” Easley said. “And I decided at that point that if I never talked to the Seahawks or to anybody in the Seahawks organization, it’d be fine with me. And it was 15 years. I didn’t watch a football game or Seahawks game or basically any kind of football.”

The question of “What if?” comes up often in football circles when discussing Easley. From 1981 to 1987, he totaled 32 interceptions and was one of the finest defensive players in the league, making the Pro Bowl five times and earning first-team All-Pro honors on three occasions. Easley was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, attaining 80 percent approval from the 48-person selection committee.

But in 1987, after he was traded to the Phoenix Cardinals, Easley failed his physical.

“When the general manager, the head trainer and the doctor walked in my room, immediately I could sense that something’s wrong,” Easley said. “And they tell me, the doctor basically says, ‘There’s no other way I can tell you this, but you failed the physical.’ And it was like somebody had punched me in the gut and knocked the wind out of my sails. I tried to compose myself and say, ‘What do you mean?’ They told me I had a kidney ailment. And in fact, I needed to be in an Arizona hospital right now.”

Easley’s wife was pregnant in Seattle, so he decided to fly back home before seeking medical attention. But he would never play another snap in the NFL.

Easley was angry at the Seahawks organization for a long time. He said the large amounts of Advil he took for pain relief contributed to the kidney ailment and argued the team knew about his condition before the 1987 season but didn’t tell him.

No relationship existed between the Seahawks and one of their most legendary players until 2002, when the organization, under owner Paul Allen, reached out to Easley about being inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor.

It was then that a friend informed Easley he was the only defensive starter on the NFL 1980s All-Decade Team to not yet be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Terrell Davis’ resume includes many runs, many wins and two Super Bowl trophies.

His former Denver Broncos teammates say they’re able to flash their Super Bowl rings because of what Davis did in the biggest moments. Even John Elway, a Hall of Fame quarterback who has also won a title as a Broncos executive, has said: “I know what a Hall of Famer looks like, and TD is a Hall of Famer.”

Davis was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, attaining 80 percent approval from the 48-person selection committee. The running back was a league MVP and Super Bowl MVP, rushed for 2,000 yards in a season, and powered the back-to-back Super Bowl champion Broncos to close out the 1997 and 1998 seasons.

Elway and former teammates Rod Smith and Shannon Sharpe — another Hall of Famer — can easily recall a long list of moments when Davis lifted the Broncos. Two of the three Lombardi trophies in the lobby of Broncos’ suburban Denver complex are certainly proof.

They also remember the one play that changed everything, the one before Davis became TD, before he had rushed for a single yard in a regular-season game, before Davis was anything but a sixth-round pick trying to hang on in the Broncos’ depth chart. It is a play so steeped in Broncos’ lore that former coach Gary Kubiak used to show the video to the rookie class as proof of what can happen when work and belief intersect.

“It was one of those plays, you just knew there was something in there,” said Smith, one of the league’s best players to not be drafted. “I tell guys all the time, to stay in this league you have to get noticed one time. Then you have to get noticed every day after that, but that first time, that’s the one. You have to make those guys upstairs stop the tape and rewind it to look again and remember your name and your story. Especially if you’re not one of those first-round guys.”

For Davis, that moment likely came Aug. 6, 1995. In a preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers played in Tokyo, Davis grabbed the Broncos by their proverbial lapels at about 11 a.m. Denver time.

In the third quarter, Davis roared down the field on kickoff coverage and blasted 49ers kick returner Tyronne Drakeford. Davis plowed into Drakeford at the 20-yard line, lifted him off his feet, and launched him 3 yards backward, landing on top of him to end the play.

It was a sliver of a moment from a preseason game that was filed away, but if every journey begins with a first step, that was Davis’. Mike Shanahan, the coach who eventually told his quarterbacks to hand the ball to Davis 1,655 times over the next seven seasons, said that play made him notice Davis.

“It’s just your gut,” Shanahan said. “You look at players, see how they work, how they carry themselves, but sometimes something just sticks out at you and is that gut feel. We had watched TD work in practice, looked at what he did, how he carried himself — but that play, that was a gut-feel play.”