Bill Belichick is the only NFL head coach to win six Super Bowls, played a vital role in establishing and maintaining a two-decade dynasty unmatched in league history, and is widely regarded as the best coach pro football has ever seen. And yet, in his first year of eligibility, he has not been voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The reasons why at least 11 of the 50 Hall of Fame voters decided to go against arguably the most deserving candidate of all time — besides quarterback Tom Brady — remain in the dark. Belichick himself reportedly blamed “politics” for the snub, and looking at the facts that seems like the most reasonable explanation.
Nonetheless, the bottom line is this: Belichick not making it in on first ballot is quite possibly the most puzzling decision ever made by the institution. With that as a starting point, here are some thoughts on the decision.
The Hall of Fame loses all its credibility
Every few years, the Hall of Fame pulls a surprise out of the bag — for better or worse. Having Terrell Owens wait multiple years comes to mind, as does Jerome Bettis’ induction despite a comparatively pedestrian résumé, or Rodney Harrison still remaining without a gold jacket. All of those, however, pale in comparison to the Belichick decision.
His résumé, frankly, is second to none. Sure, the 2007 Spygate scandal is to this day a black mark on his résumé in the eyes of several people inside the league and the media covering it — and it appears it has been used as pretext for the votes falling the way they did — but the story of the Patriots’ wrongly-positioned videotaping operation has been overblown from the get-go and is ultimately immaterial to his success as both a head coach and, previously, an assistant.
At the end of the day, there is no world in which Belichick should not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Part of it might have been the voting process, too, as outlined by ESPN’s Mike Sando, but the bottom line remains the same: you look at every candidate eligible this year, can you find anyone with a superior track record? No, you cannot.
The voters still deciding to vote against Belichick is therefore a farce, and stands in stark contrast to what the Hall of Fame itself claims its mission is:
Honor the Greatest of the Game, Preserve its History, Promote its Values and Celebrate Excellence Together.
In that particular instance, the Hall of Fame has failed to adhere to its own principles. By doing so, it loses all of its credibility as a serious institution.
The voting process is a sham
You can say whatever you want about the Baseball Hall of Fame voting, but at the very least it is done with some transparency and a wide group of voters who offer varying view-points on the game and its history. The Pro Football Hall of Fame vote, on the other hand, is conducted in secret by a group of 50 people — effectively one journalist for each team plus a handful of others deemed worthy of such an honor — with little to no accountability after the fact.
This, in turn, has allowed the aforementioned politics to impact the process time and again. If you can just vote against somebody for reasons beyond what the scope of the Hall of Fame should be, you basically are encouraged to do so. Belichick is the latest and most dramatic candidate to fall victim to this.
Just think about it this way: if the voting process was public, would he have been denied entry at the first opportunity? You probably know the answer to the question.
Anti-Patriots bias is real
In 2017, the Hall of Fame decided to enshrine Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Jones bought his franchise in 1989, and in his first seven seasons at the helm won three Super Bowls. Since then, however, the team has fallen flat time and again: in the 29 years since their last championship, the Cowboys have won a grand total of five playoff games and not once advanced past the divisional round.
Jones’ impact on the league is more diverse than that, of course, but his Hall of Fame case has been propped up mostly by his early success. Then, there is Robert Kraft.
Kraft bought the Patriots five years after Jones acquired the Cowboys, but his achievements far surpass that of his fellow owner. By the time Jones was enshrined, he had already won more Super Bowls and has overseen an operation far more consistent than Dallas’. In addition, Kraft — while grieving the passing of his wife of 48 years — helped resolve the 2011 labor dispute between the NFL and NFLPA.
And yet, he remains for Hall of Fame induction to this day. He could get in this year, but the fact that he missed out on it time and again is telling: the voters, for whichever reason, have decided to blackball Kraft so far, something it seems they are also keen on doing with Belichick if even for one year.
Is there an anti-Patriots bias in the Hall of Fame? Looking at those two decisions (and others such as the aforementioned Rodney Harrison) it is hard to make an argument to the contrary.
Bill Polian is the biggest loser in NFL history
If ESPN’s report into the Belichick snub is to be believed, former Buffalo Bills and Indianapolis Colts general manager Bill Polian was the driving force behind the voters opting to go against the most successful coach in league history. Figures.
For two decades, Polian very much was the Washington Generals to Belichick’s Harlem Globetrotters. Starting in Super Bowl XXV, when the latter advised a game plan — one that can be visited as an exhibit in the Hall of Fame, by the way — for the New York Giants to slow down the Bills’ high-flying K-gun offense, Polian has come out on the wrong end on multiple occasions against Belichick.
This continued in the 2000s, when the Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years. Twice, they did so after tossing Polian’s Colts teams from the playoffs. Famously, the first of those defeats led to the Colts and their GM lobby for the NFL to enforce stricter defensive penalties; Polian also was on the forefront
Those, of course, did not slow the Patriots down too much. While they went on to win six Super Bowls under Belichick, the Colts won one of them before Polian was fired after the 2011 season.
Polian, by the way, denied the accusation that he played a role in Belichick not getting in. However, after first claiming he voted for him, he later told ESPN that he did not remember who he was voting for four weeks ago. Given that he also once said he had a first-round grade on Tom Brady back in 2000, his word should probably not be taken at face value.
Polian is a Hall of Famer — although given everything that has unfolded one could very well argue his credentials, too — but beyond that he has proven himself something else: arguably the biggest sore loser the league has ever seen.
The reactions say it all
Countless ex-Patriots, current and former NFL players including Patrick Mahomes, Terrell Owens and Gerald McCoy, Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson, non-Hall of Fame-voting journalists, and even LeBron James were all united on Tuesday in their reaction to the Belichick news. That reaction can best be summed up like this:
WTF?
That Bill Belichick of all people managed to united them in support for his case speaks for itself. Even his most ardent distractors, and there are many especially in media circles, voiced their disbelief over the Hall of Fame’s decision not to make him a first-ballot inductee.
Probably the most accurate reaction was shared by former Patriots assistant coach Mike Pellegrino, who took to Instagram to offer a five-word response:
That about sums it up.
