For Patriots’ fans, this one hit like a gut punch. The legendary Bill Belichick — architect of six Super Bowl wins for New England, the most of any head coach in NFL history — will not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
The vote is sparking backlash and confusion. Even Tom Brady weighed in. “To me, I don’t understand it; I mean, I was with him every day,” Brady said. “If he’s not a first-round Hall of Famer, there’s really no coach that should ever be a first-round Hall of Famer.”
One Boston writer says the snub might say less about Belichick and more about the Hall itself. The Athletic’s Steve Buckley joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk more about the controversial decision. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: You’ve covered the team and the league for decades. What was your immediate reaction to hearing this?
Steve Buckley: Well, I’m a columnist, and my job is to have opinions. My opinion is that this was stunning. I didn’t plan [on Tuesday] to be writing a column about Belichick not getting into the Hall of Fame because the announcement is next week at the Super Bowl site. They hold a big announcement, and they make known who the inductees will be for the coming year.
I was in Denver with the Patriots for the AFC Championship game. I got back to Boston [Tuesday], and it was not supposed to be a day I would be writing. This announcement comes out, and it’s two surprises: Number one, that the news even came out, and number two, that Belichick — one of the greatest coaches in football history — is not in it. It’s really stunning.
Rath: For consideration, what is the Hall of Fame considering? Is it not Super Bowl wins? What are their criteria, and tell us how Belichick stacks up against previous first-ballot winners.
Buckley: Well, there’s no laundry list of items that need to be checked off in order for one to be in the Hall of Fame, or else there’d be no point [in having] an election. You would simply take every coach, every player, and if they checked off X number of boxes, they’d be in and be done with it. But we’re not machines — not yet.
They — the voters — look at a coach’s all-time record, number of Super Bowl victories, and, again, there is no set thing. It’s the same thing in baseball; you don’t need to hit 500 home runs to be in the Hall of Fame. You don’t need to win 300 games. You just need to have credentials that are eye-popping. There are so many intangibles involved.
You do have a sort of character issue. Was this person good [for] the game? Was he… and I don’t even want to get into that because that’s when you get into the piety and the hand-wringing. Belichick was fined over the Spygate episode back in 2007, and he may or may not have been involved in the whole Deflategate thing in 2015 with Tom Brady. If you talk to the right people in the right city, they will refer to Belichick as “Beli-cheat,” and so forth.
So, there’s that side of the coin, and then there’s the fact that he won six Super Bowls as a head coach, which nobody else has done. He also won two more as defensive coordinator with the New York Giants. It depends on [which] side of the coin you want to value.
Rath: You mentioned the other side; there’s the hand-wringing. Is that it? It seems to be that you’re saying that the voters are trying to send a message with this.
Buckley: Well, to ask anybody to think as the voters think is a tough assignment, but let’s look at why one might not vote for Belichick.
He was certainly prickly, and short, and squirrely, and on and on and on with the media. I like to think that any voter in evaluating his Hall of Fame-worthiness would not get caught up in that because, as I wrote in the column in the Athletic, there are a lot of insecure football coaches, as there are everywhere. We are accustomed to that. I mean… He certainly took it to an art form-level.
There is the issue of him being caught cheating in 2007, and there is a theory making the rounds that has been speculated by a lot of people that having him serve a one-year penance — like, [he’ll] get in eventually, but let’s let him wait a year as punishment. To which I say: He already was punished for those bad deeds. There was a pretty high fine that he had to pay in 2007. The Patriots lost their first-round draft pick, which I have to think cost [Belichick] more than the money he had to write out in the form of a check.
So, if the NFL meted out punishment and Belichick paid his penalty — both in terms of reputation and money lost, and draft picks lost — that should, in a perfect world, even the books. And he gets to go back and coach again. He did not get a lifetime suspension. He didn’t get a one-year suspension. You didn’t even get a one-game suspension. So if the books are clear, and his career is apparently over as an NFL head coach, and he’s up for induction in the Hall of Fame, to me, that shouldn’t be taken into consideration. That’s the way I look at it, but I’m not a voter.
Rath: You wrote that it was going to be interesting to see if Robert Kraft would be elected to the Hall of Fame. Why do you say that?
Buckley: Well, he’s been waiting a long time. The three amigos of the Patriots dynasty in the first quarter of this century, clearly, are the owner, Robert Kraft, the coach, Bill Belichick, and the quarterback, Tom Brady. All three should be in the Hall of Fame; there’s absolutely no doubt about that.
There’s also no doubt that the Patriots were a little too transparent and out-front with their lobbying to get Kraft elected, which is probably why he’s been stewing for a few years now. If it’s announced next week that Robert Kraft is going to the Hall of Fame — and he would go in as a builder, obviously, not as a coach or a player; there’s a category for builders, and he richly deserves that honor. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.
But listen, Belichick and Kraft had been at odds, they’ve been sniping at each other since the day Belichick walked out of the building when there was a quote-unquote “mutual parting of the ways” — I say fired, but whatever — but they’ve been sniping ever since. If it’s announced next week that Kraft is going in, and that Belichick didn’t, people are going to say, “Oh, well, you know, the NFL got behind the owner,” or “The writers got behind [the owner].” Again, it’s not all writers; it’s also the NFL executives.
I don’t have a horse in that race because I believe they both should be in, but that’s going to be the next shoe to drop when the announcements are made.
Rath: What do you think the fan takeaway from all of this should be?
Buckley: Which fans are we talking about? If we’re talking to most Patriots fans, they believe he certainly should be in. If you talk to football fans in Indianapolis who root for the Colts, who lost to the Patriots in the game that set up Deflategate; if you talked to Jets fans, the team whose sideline was being filmed by the Patriots’ camera guys back in 2007; and if you talk to Dolphins’ fans who have a thing for their dearly-departed head coach Don Shula — Shula never liked Belichick. So those fans are probably delirious right now that this is all happening.
However, if you read the column I wrote for the Athletic, there were more than 600 comments. There were quite a few comments in there that say, “I never liked Bill Belichick, BUT....” “I hate Bill Belichick, BUT....” So I think that there are fans in other markets who are taking a fairness approach to this — that even though they are at odds with Belichick, or never liked the guy, or he’s this, that, or the other thing, they take a step back and see a slightly bigger picture. And the slightly bigger picture illustrates why Belichick should be in the Hall of Fame.
