AP

Donovan McNabb’s career may be over, as he hasn’t drawn any interest from any teams since the Vikings released him late last year. If his career is over, McNabb believes he belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s class of 2017.

McNabb said on the online interview show Barfly that he thinks there’s no question that he should be in the Hall of Fame.

“Absolutely,” McNabb said. “See, one thing that people don’t realize — I never played the game to make it to the Hall of Fame. I played the game because I love it. I played the game to win. I’m a competitor. When I step out on the field, I feel like I’m the best player on the field. Even these last two years, when people may look at it and say, ‘Oh, he’s done, or whatever.’ I’m 34, 35 years old but still, I played at the pinnacle, I played at the highest level of my career. I played there. And I would vote for myself for the Hall of Fame.”

McNabb said he thinks the reason a lot of people don’t view him as a Hall of Famer is that he doesn’t have a Super Bowl ring, and he said that’s an unfair standard to use in judging quarterbacks.

“Peyton never won the big game until he won the Super Bowl finally. Dan Marino never won the big game. But does that mean his career is a failure? No. Not at all,” McNabb said. “When you sit and look at the numbers — and that’s what it is when it comes to the Hall of Fame — my numbers are better than Jim Kelly, better than Troy Aikman, better than a lot of guys in the Hall of Fame, but the one thing they do have is a Super Bowl.”

In the middle of his career, McNabb had some very good seasons, and he did look like a future Hall of Famer. But McNabb never took the next step from good quarterback to great quarterback, and his failures in Washington and Minnesota make it extremely unlikely that the Hall of Fame selection committee will ever look back at his accomplishments and decide he’s worthy of a bust in Canton. McNabb would vote for himself, but the people who actually have a vote won’t.