The entire matter comes down to one simple question: Is Bill Belichick a Hall of Famer?
Forget the mechanics of the voting process, forget the perceived slights, the “cheating” scandals, and the hours upon hours of mumbling, grumbling press conference clips that have been recorded over the years. Just answer the question: Is Bill Belichick a Hall of Famer?
It’s a question so elementary that it’s almost insulting. Reciting the man’s body of work — second-most wins of all time, more playoff wins (31), Super Bowls (6) and conference championships (9) than any other head coach — is unnecessary, and the presentation that was put forth before the voting committee was likewise a waste of time.
No debate or discussion is needed because, of course — obviously — Bill Belichick belongs in the Hall of Fame. Period.
Nevertheless, here we are, entering Week 2 of The Great Belichick Hall Snub discourse. And if you’re already growing tired of the topic, you’re going to have to buckle up for a week of radio row jackals pounding away at the story for much of their time in the Bay Area. (Who wants to talk about X’s and O’s when you can instead tackle a soap opera like this one?)
What do Jerry Rice and Joe Montana think about Belichick’s snub? Can we hear from Peyton Manning? (Maybe not Eli, though.) Do Hall of Famers Bill Cowher and Tony Dungy believe Belichick belongs among their ranks? Will Jimmy Johnson remain on the rampage? Will any surviving members of the ’72 Dolphins emerge to kick a man when he’s down? Keep your radios dialed, as the men wearing gold jackets (and hawking hot sauce or toilet paper) are sure to be continually tossing logs into this fire.
And expect the voters to continue feeling some of that heat. Rightfully so. They can blame the process — which allowed them to only pick three from the group of Belichick, Robert Kraft, Ken Anderson, L.C. Greenwood and Roger Craig — all they want, but it’s truly no excuse. When the most obvious Hall of Famer of your lifetime is listed on your ballot, you vote for that man to go into the Hall of Fame. There’s no need to complicate the matter.
“I voted for the three senior candidates: Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood,” voter Vahe Gregorian wrote in his story explaining the Belichick omission from his ballot. “You could call that rationalizing, I suppose.”
“Rationalizing” is probably not the right word to use there. Confusing one’s responsibilities as a Hall of Fame voter to a ghastly degree is more accurate.
Gregorian — from the Kansas City Star — is one of two voters to have come out publicly and explained why they didn’t vote for the second-winningest coach in NFL history to get into the Hall of Fame, with Indianapolis’ Mike Chappell being the other.
(That’s Kansas City and Indianapolis checking in thus far. Roger that.)
“I tend to favor a senior candidate over a coach/GM,” Chappell explained on social media. “Belichick will almost assuredly get in next year. If these senior guys don’t make it, they might never get a chance.”
One could make the argument that if players whose last seasons were played in 1981, 1986 and 1993 have not yet made the Hall of Fame, then perhaps they don’t belong, and that the assumption that “Belichick will almost assuredly get in next year” is not true if voters continue to prioritize voting for players they remember from their childhoods.
In perhaps a more honest revelation, Chappell stated that with Belichick, “there’s no erasing the stain of Spygate from his bio.” That part of the equation has to be a consideration, of course. And it’s a conversation that perhaps requires a longer discussion than anybody wants to have right now, nearly two decades removed from the videotaping operation first making headlines.
Yet, as ever, personal hangups on Spygate appear to be rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of what it was the Patriots were found to be doing back in 2007. That much becomes crystal clear when those detractors bring up “Spygate 2,” an incident when a camera operator filmed the entire field during a Bengals-Browns game in 2019 … in an era when defensive calls are radioed in to the helmets of defensive play-callers. Whatever people believe the Patriots were gaining from that footage is anyone’s guess, but they do know it was bad. Very bad. Just as bad as the first time. Maybe even worse.
Whether it was Spygate, or Deflategate, or whatever else some voters might have disliked about Belichick, the fact is, it amounted to 11 of 50 voters leaving the obvious Hall of Famer off their ballots. Perhaps they thought America would get a kick out of seeing Belichick take a hit like that, but if that was the intent, it has backfired in a big way. For the first time in history, Belichick became a sympathetic figure, with football fans — and admitted Belichick haters — pointing out the absurdity of the situation. The backlash reflects poorly on the voters and their process, and the 39 voters who did select Belichick on their ballots are likely going to get a bit perturbed as they continue to get hounded about the decision-making of the group.
In some sense, this is all a bit silly. When and how people receive their laurels doesn’t really matter in anyone’s everyday life. And Belichick, with all of his millions of dollars and decades of unparalleled NFL success, will be just fine, even if he has to wait an extra year to head to Canton. (It could actually be a positive for him if Kraft does get in this year, thus sparing Bill the indignity of sharing the spotlight with his former boss.)
It’s just that this particular instance went beyond the pale. If Bill Belichick is not worthy of a Hall of Fame vote, then there’s really no use for a Hall of Fame. If those 11 voters sought to hurt the coach with their omissions, they ended up doing more damage to themselves and their institution.
Now, in terms of some other thoughts as Super Bowl week kicks off in the greater San Francisco area …
• If you’re like me, then you can’t help but wonder if these Patriots are good enough to pull this off. You know that despite the easy schedule and some fortunate breaks, they still have won 17 football games this season, and that’s no joke. You know that despite a lack of depth at most spots on their roster, their starters collectively have proven to be better than imagined. And you know that the second-year quarterback turbo-charged his development and became a top-five guy when most fans would have been happy to see him secure a position in the top half of the league’s QBs.
They absolutely earned their spot here, but you’re left to wonder if they’re good enough to take down the team that emerged from the best division in football and defeated the presumed league MVP in the conference championship.
If the Patriots lose, then the “fool’s gold” people are sure to take a victory lap. If they win, the “soft schedule” critiques will instantly fade in history, hidden in the shadow of yet another Super Bowl banner at Gillette. It’s just one game, and the Patriots are absolutely capable of winning one game on one night against anyone. Yet similar to the feeling heading into Super Bowl XXXVI against the Rams, I’m having difficulty fully believing that this team can finish the job.
• How the Patriots can get that win, to me, centers on two spots for the same reason: Interior pressure, and limiting Jaxon Smith-Njigba. I know, it’s revolutionary. Nobody’s ever thought of that before.
But the total reliance on Smith-Njigba jumps out tremendously when looking at the Seahawks. He had 163 targets during the season; Cooper Kupp ranked second with 70. His 119 catches were more than twice as many as AJ Barner, who was second on the team with 52. And his 1,793 receiving yards were more than triple those of Kupp, who ranked second with 593. (He also caught 10 touchdowns, which accounted for 40 percent of Sam Darnold‘s TD passes.)
It’s undoubtedly odd that two of the Seahawks’ three losses this season came when Smith-Njigba matched his season-high of nine receptions. Yet letting him beat you while shutting down the rest of the Seahawks’ options doesn’t feel like the winning strategy.
The interior pressure from Milton Williams, Christian Barmore, Khyiris Tonga and Cory Durden is step one, as Darnold isn’t mobile (or healthy) enough to escape it. Yet it’s how the Patriots approach it on the back end that’s more interesting.
Do they put Christian Gonzalez on Smith-Njigba straight-up, mano-a-mano, best vs. best, and see who wins? That would be must-see TV, but if you study Smith-Njigba’s route-running and body control, covering him 1-on-1 often seems to be truly impossible. If Gonzalez were to do that with success, he might be looking at a Super Bowl MVP in his near future.
What seems more achievable would be to have Gonzalez spend more time shutting down Kupp, who’s a crafty veteran receiver but is nowhere close to the 2021 version of himself who dominated for the Rams in Super Bowl LVI. That would allow the Patriots to dedicate Carlton Davis, plus some safety help, in trying to limit Smith-Njigba. There’s no stopping him, but preventing him from taking over the game should be the mission, as it feels like the Patriots’ most reliable path to victory.
• Drake Maye’s shoulder is going to be fine. It has to be. While it makes sense that his accuracy was a mess in Denver, after getting shellacked by Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter a week prior, essentially a full week of rest before heading out to California should be enough for the 23-year-old to heal. He won’t be the first quarterback in NFL history to have to play through a sore shoulder.
In terms of a Seattle defensive weakness, though, it’s hard to find one. They have allowed 120 or more rushing yards in a game four times this season … but the Seahawks have won all four of those games, three via blowout. They did get torched by Matthew Stafford in that wild Thursday night game in early December, but they also won that one in overtime. That was just one of three instances of an opposing quarterback throwing for more than 300 yards against the Seahawks this year.
Two of those three 300-yard performances came from Stafford. So, with the two quarterbacks being neck and neck for MVP all year, consider this the final exam for Maye. Under the guidance of Josh McDaniels, Maye will have to get back on the same page with Kayshon Boutte for the downfield throws, activate Stefon Diggs in a role greater than glorified early-down running back, take advantage of the size advantage Mack Hollins is sure to have over the middle of the field and strategically target Hunter Henry for chunk plays and touchdowns to have an MVP-caliber performance. And the Patriots will likely need it.
• If you’re wondering, “Uh, who the hell is this guy?” Hi! I’m Michael Hurley. I’ve been covering the Patriots — for NESN, CBS Boston, and NBC Sports Boston — since Bill Belichick couldn’t get the Patriots to play the way they needed to play back in 2009. You may have heard Michael Felger refer to me as a footie pajama-wearing homer/honk/bobo, which is a reputation I “earned” by having the audacity to write that the Patriots were good when they were winning 14 games every year and playing in every other Super Bowl instead of trashing them and all of their “flaws.” Sue me! When they’ve been bad — and there’s been plenty of opportunity in the 2020s — I’ve certainly stated as much while trying to figure out why.
In any event, it’ll be nice to meet a lot of you and reunite with many more.
(Oh, also, ask me about Deflategate, so long as you’ve got a few hours to spare.)
• Aside from the football aspect, Super Bowl week brings with it an overwhelming amount of media availability. That begins with “Opening Night” brought to you by some corporate sponsor and aired live on NFL Network on Monday night from a convention center in San Jose, a convenient 90-plus minute afternoon drive for the media staying in San Francisco.
Call me old-fashioned, but I miss the old days when Media Day was a proper circus, held on the same field where the game would be played later in the week. The goofball antics — most famously the reporter wearing a bridal gown and proposing to Tom Brady — made it to TV in produced packages after the fact, but the event itself felt more like a kick start to the week, with the players and coaches taking it all in. Now with the odd locations, fans being in attendance, the prime-time placement, and the increasing hesitance of athletes to say anything that interesting, it’s more of a soulless, dizzying, made-for-TV event that doesn’t quite work the same way it used to.
At one of the final daytime affairs, I recall more and more people flooding the floor that was normally used for the Phoenix Suns — a space far too small to hold an event like Media Day. At a certain point, while stuck 25 people away from a podium and unable to move anywhere, I realized that my presence at the event was solely to be a prop for TV. A background extra, if you will. That was perhaps the start of the new era for the event.
But, on the plus side, the longest and worst week of the year — aka The Week With No Football — is now over. We made it, people. Time to gear up for the Super Bowl. Doesn’t get much better than that.
