Reviewing 2026 NFL HOF Class, Belichick absence
Mike Florio and Michael Holley discuss the 2026 NFL Hall of Fame class after the Hall of Fame game last night and what led to Bill Belichick's absence this year.
Video Transcript
It's a great class this year.
Very g- very, very strong class.
But it should, and they talked about this on the pregame show last night, where's Bill Belichick?
And I hope that it doesn't overshadow the guys who got in, but I hope it isn't forgotten either, 'cause it needs to be discussed.
You know, they still haven't made any changes to the voting rules that resulted in Belichick not making it.
How can you not?
They say if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and implicit in that is if it is broke, fix it.
And it's broken.
Right.
Whatever process leads to Bill Belichick not being a first ballot Hall of Famer, that process is horribly flawed and needs to be fixed, period.
You're right.
And, and, and Mike, correct me if, if I'm, if I'm getting this wrong.
I think I remember it like this.
I think the reason, and i- this is, this is no justification for it, I think Bill Belichick not being in is because he was competing E- essentially, he was competing with Roger Craig.
I think it was in, he was in the same bucket as Roger Craig and L.C.
Greenwood.
I think that they had it all, they had all of these, candidates that, you know, candidates need to come out of one subcommittee to be forwarded to the larger voting body, and somehow they had non-players and contributors, like Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft, competing with Ken Anderson and Roger Craig and, and Greenwood, and Roger Craig emerged.
Is that right?
They do this weird thing where they've got a coaches committee, a contributors committee, and a seniors committee, and every year it seems they have a different number of finalists who are nominated by each of the committees.
And it used to be that if you were a finalist, you got an up or down vote, and each individual of these finalists who don't come from the modern era player bucket, coach, contributor, senior.
Finalist, okay, you get a yes, no, up, down, and if you get 80% yes, you get in.
Very simple.
Moratorium on each guy.
This guy right here, does he get a bust?
Does he not get a bust?
B- what they do now, and this is what happened this year, Belichick from the coaches committee, Kraft from the contributors committee, L.C.
Greenwood, Ken Anderson, Roger Craig from the seniors committee.
Put all five in one bucket, and the 50 voters- Wow, that's just- pick three.
They pick three.
And you gotta, you gotta get 40, you gotta get 40 votes, you gotta show up on 40 ballots as one of the three.
So each one was competing with the other four.
So Belichick's competing with Kraft and L.C.
Greenwood and Ken Anderson and Roger Craig.
I don't know how any of them got to 40, and there is a provision there that if none of them do, one of them still gets in.
The one who got the most votes, if none of them get to 40, gets in.
But we were talking about this yesterday.
If you say that's your group of five and you're putting three down, how is it not, all right, Belichick's one on everyone's Of those five, Belichick's one.
Now we'll figure out the other two.
Right.
And I remember some of the explanations from back at the time were, "Well, Ken Anderson's never gonna get another chance, so I voted for him."
And that's not the way it should be done.
That's just, that's just bad logic.
And those are the people- Right who shouldn't be voting.
It is a no-brainer.
And look, I'm not some Belichick fan.
I don't have a Belichick tattoo.
I don't like how he dealt with the media over the years, and people think, oh, this is the opportunity for the people in the media to get back at him.
I think he was unnecessarily dismissive, unnecessarily rude.
Yes.
I don't think that his foray into college football is something that would bolster his reputation or his resume, but you can't deny the fact that he's, number one, one of the all-time great coaches in the NFL, and number two, arguably the best game day prep and execute coach who's ever lived in any sport, and he should be in the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.
It shouldn't even be a conversation, much less a debate.
And it made everybody connected to the process look bad, and I hope it does get, in fair measure, discussed this week, and we don't just say, "Well..." 'Cause if, you know, the people at the Hall of Fame are gonna be like, "Well, we don't really wanna rain on the parade for the people who are getting in.
It would be bad form to talk about the guy who didn't make it.
Let's celebrate the guys who did."
Yeah, that's because you don't want us talking about it because you know that it's an embarrassment to everyone involved that this happened.
Yeah.
It, it's really hard to defend.
If you, if you think about it, and if you say it out loud, if you say, "Bill Belichick is not in the Hall of Fame.
He was eligible to be in the Hall of Fame in the first ballot.
Bill Belichick is not a..." Pro Football Hall of Famer.
It's, it's You gotta be uncomfortable saying that out loud if you're one of the people who was responsible for, for, for the vote.
You know, there's a thing on, on I, I know you're a fan of TikTok, Mike.
There was a thing on TikTok years ago where they would- you'd name a band, you'd s- you'd have a top five list.
So somebody would throw an, a name of a band at you, and you'd have to say either one, two, three, four, five.
So if I throw Kiss at you and you say number one, and then I throw The Beatles at you and you say number two, then you have to say, "Okay, Mike, you have said Kiss is better than The Beatles."
You're like, "Well, can I do that again?"
But that was a total, that was like a random generator.
We just had to just guess where it was going.
It seems like this here.
Are you really saying that And I love Rog- I love that Roger Craig is in the Hall of Fame, but you can't say Roger Craig is more of a Hall of Famer at the running back spot than Bill Belichick was as a coach.
It just doesn't make sense.
And same thing with Ken Anderson, and L.C.
Greenwood, and Robert Kraft, for that matter.
So it is broken.
They have to fix it.
They should've known as soon as they came out of that and looked at it and said, "Wow, Bill Belichick didn't make it," they all should've been determined to fix it.
Even if you're one of those people who, who defends it, you're in the minority.
The, the, the greater body knows that that was totally wrong, and you can't do anything like that again.
Yeah.
And this is nothing against Roger Craig, but Bill Belichick is more worthy of being in the Hall of Fame than Roger Craig.
And I, I can't imagine that anyone would be able to make a case for that who was objective and unbiased.
And what happens is when you get to these voting processes, you get certain people campaigning for, and in a setting like that where it's competitive among five people, necessarily campaigning against others.
And it just, it shouldn't be that way.
And there's so much of that politicking, there's so much of that.
And I'm not here to judge those who would be obsessed with getting in the Hall of Fame.
I understand it's a great honor.
But isn't the right attitude, "If it comes, it comes, and if it doesn't, it doesn't"?
But what happens is because some people do politic to get in, others may feel compelled to do the same thing.
Because if I don't, the people who politic, the people who play the game, the people who trade favors, the people who know how to work the back channels, they're the ones who are gonna get in.
I've just always thought it was kind of And I Look, I don't mean anyone in particular here.
I could give you examples of situations where I've caught wind of it, whether it's the Pro Football Hall of Fame or something far less significant.
But it just seems sad to me when someone lacks the self-awareness to realize that it looks petty and it looks small if you're gonna try to politic for some discretionary external recognition.
If you get it, you get it.
If you don't, you don't.
But it just, you're a grown adult, presumably.
It looks weak.
It looks weak if you feel compelled to try to work your way into this thing, and then you'll get up and say, "Oh, I, it's just an honor to be considered.
I had no idea I would ever win.
This was never even on my-" Bullshit.
Right.
But we've all seen that- Right in one setting or another.
And the people who do it, you know, they say, they say, as to the great Michael Scott from The Office, they say, "Everyone knows a Michael Scott, and if you don't know a Michael Scott, you're a Michael Scott."
And that is Michael Scott behavior, that lack of self-awareness necessary to realize it just looks a little bit lame, a lot lame, if you're trying to politic, even if it's the Hall of Fame.
All right, we should break.
We were not gonna talk about the Hall of Fame for very long.
Guy, I just Can I say real quick, Mike?
Sure.
Can I say real- really quickly?
God, I wish you hadn't said that last part.
I wish you hadn't said that last part.
I was agreeing with you until the very end, because- Oh you don't know my middle name, do you?
Oh, no.
You're Michael Scott Hawley, so I do know a Michael Scott.
