Big Picture: Bill Belichick’s Exclusion Is an Unprecedented Gaffe for Hall of Fame

If you want to know what the Pro Football Hall of Fame means to Bill Belichick, know this: For a day in the summer of 2019, he was basically a tour guide in Canton, Ohio. On the way to a training camp practice with the Detroit Lions, Belichick had the Patriots’ team plane stop to see the Hall so he could share his passion and reverence for the league’s history. Belichick took more than 100 of his players and coaches through the Hall that day. Ask anyone on that team — it was a highlight of the season. “I remember walking through the Hall of Fame with the greatest coach of all time and the greatest quarterback of all time [Tom Brady],” former Patriots quarterback Brian Hoyer told me. “You had to just pinch yourself. You’re walking through history with living history.” The Hall of Fame matters to Belichick. NFL history matters to Belichick. He made a significant impact on it. Excluding him this year from the Hall of Fame feels like a tremendous failure to properly recognize that impact. Belichick won’t be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The greatest NFL coach of all time will endure the greatest snub of all time. There’s no doubt in my mind that this snub will sting him personally. Belichick is absolutely one to hold a grudge. Sure, he’ll get in next year. But why should Belichick have to wait? He’s won six Super Bowls as a head coach, more than anyone else. He had nine Super Bowl appearances, most as a head coach. He had the most divisional championships ever (17). His 333 wins are the second most all time. He was a three-time NFL Coach of the Year. He held the longest playoff streak with 11 seasons. He helped mold Brady into the greatest quarterback of all time. Bill Belichick is the most accomplished coach in NFL history. The greatest. Excluding him — even if just on the first vote — is an embarrassment for the Hall of Fame. It’s an embarrassment for the voting process. “That’s like a grudge decision to not put him in,” a former Patriots coach told me. “Makes the Hall of Fame look so bad,” a former Patriots player told me. “Makes no sense.” And it’s an unfortunate irony that the man who revered the Hall — perhaps more than literally anyone — must deal with disrespect from the institution. Other than some Hall voters, just about everyone agrees that Belichick should’ve gotten in. Not next week. Not next month. But yesterday. Patrick Mahomes couldn’t believe it. Deion Sanders couldn’t believe it. LeBron James couldn’t believe it. They all took to social media to express what seemed like a unanimous opinion. Except that we now know it isn’t unanimous, because a few Hall of Fame voters omitted Belichick from their ballots. How or why did this happen? First, it’s important to understand the voting process, which changed in 2025 to make the Hall of Fame more exclusive. Voters are now allowed to vote for fewer candidates in the final round. The unintended consequence is that Belichick got excluded. Given that Belichick seemed like such a shoo-in, perhaps some didn’t give him the votes he deserved because they assumed others would. But the logistics were likely only one of the issues. There’s the fact that Belichick is going up against several strong candidates, including Patriots owner Robert Kraft. There’s also the matter of Belichick’s baggage. His Patriots were entrenched in two cheating scandals: Spygate and Deflategate. Spygate was unequivocally Belichick’s scandal and Deflategate was still under his watch. But in both cases, the organization paid the price — in draft picks and dollars. In both cases, the Patriots went on to win more Super Bowls. And if you want to take away one of Belichick’s Super Bowls for Spygate, he still has more championships than the second coach on the list, Chuck Noll (four). And yet, perhaps the Hall committee might not have felt Belichick got punished enough. Former Colts and Bills executive Bill Polian reportedly made the case that Belichick should have to wait because of the scandals, per ESPN. Polian has since denied that report. The Colts-Patriots rivalry was serious — and went beyond the faces of the organizations: Brady and Peyton Manning. The Spygate investigation revealed that the Patriots recorded a number of NFL teams, including the Colts. That came after Polian and the Colts, in 2004, helped push through rule changes that prevented contact with receivers beyond five yards downfield and emphasized defensive pass interference. This was a clear response to a playoff game in which the Patriots beat the Colts by making aggressive use of (then-legal) contact downfield. Some called it the “Ty Law rule,” referring to the former New England cornerback. And everyone knew Polian was the rule’s biggest advocate. “Bill Polian is so jealous he could never beat Bill, no matter what he did or what rules he changed to try and gain an advantage,” one of Belichick’s former Patriots coordinators told me. Years later, apparently it’s still personal. Early in my career on the Patriots beat, I asked Belichick a question about an undrafted receiver, Austin Carr, catching a touchdown pass in an unpadded practice during training camp. Belichick rolled his eyes and ripped me to shreds for 448 words, sarcastically referring to me and other media members as “a talented group of evaluators.” It was my first question of camp, and it set the tone for how he’d treat me for the duration of my work covering New England. He never seemed to like answering my questions, which is true of most reporters. It culminated in a moment in 2020 when Belichick’s Patriots effectively got eliminated from the playoffs due to a Cam Newton fumble. New England hadn’t missed the playoffs in 11 years. And I asked Belichick … how he felt? “How do you think we felt, Henry?” He had a way of trying to make reporters feel stupid, of making it feel personal. Despite that, I wouldn’t hesitate to vote him into the Hall of Fame. The Super Bowl is an end-all, be-all accomplishment. It’s what media members hold against quarterbacks and coaches who never won one. (See: Josh Allen, Dan Marino.) It’s what props mediocre statistical players into greatness (See: Eli Manning, Joe Flacco.) You can’t have it both ways: holding Super Bowl championships as the most important accomplishment in a person’s career and then omitting the coach who won the most titles. It’s fitting that this came out ahead of the Super Bowl, because it will magnify the absurdity of it all. The NFL world is fixated on the Lombardi Trophy — now more than ever. The mania that fuels these next two weeks should’ve fueled Belichick’s Hall of Fame campaign. But it’s over. The votes are cast. So let’s end by looking forward. Reporters often tweet after games about the key players who chose not to speak. It’s a way of holding the players accountable. Well, now it’s time for the Hall of Fame committee to speak on this error. Because that’s what it is, objectively. It’s a gaffe like a dropped touchdown pass in the Super Bowl. Someone needs to answer for it. So let’s hear it. How did this happen? In the Big Picture, we contextualize key moves and moments so you can instantly understand why they matter.