As if Bill Belichick being snubbed for first-ballot Hall of Fame induction wasn’t enough. Recent reports suggest Patriots owner Robert Kraft didn’t get the call to Canton this year either.
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Kraft’s snub feels especially harsh because he has been a football fan at heart. Before buying the Patriots in 1994, he was a season ticket holder since the ’70s. Once he took over, his Patriots reached the Super Bowl a whopping ten times, the most among any owner. He also has six rings, and if things go well next Sunday, he could add a seventh.
That resume alone should guarantee a gold jacket. But just like Belichick, Kraft faces rejection, and some analysts are pointing to the new voting process as the culprit. And we’d argue they have a point.
According to NFL beat writer Rick Stroud, there are 50 voters for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and each voter is allowed to cast up to three votes among a pool of five candidates. That creates a total of 150 possible votes, and a candidate needs at least 40 votes, or 80 percent of the voter base, to earn induction.
Reports suggest Bill Belichick received 39 votes, just one short of the required threshold. That single miss blocked his induction. With 150 total votes available, if one candidate secures the necessary 40, the remaining votes are spread thin among the other finalists. In Belichick’s group of five, that meant three candidates were left competing for the remaining 71 votes after another finalist cleared the bar.
And that setup forces multiple strong candidates to cannibalize votes, making it extremely difficult for more than one or two names to reach the cutoff in a single year.
“It’s an insane system that has to be changed and not merely the fault of voters. Put some of the blame where it belongs,” Stroud tweeted.
There are 50 PFHOF voters who can only vote for three of the five candidates. 150 votes in the pool. If reports are true that Bill Belichick fell one vote shy of the 40 needed for election, that left 111 votes for the remaining four candidates. Say one player received 40 for… https://t.co/G5YtPTmwwB
— Rick Stroud (@NFLSTROUD) February 3, 2026
The Pro Football Hall of Fame updated its voting process in late 2024, and the controversy this year has really shown us why change is needed.
Some argue that Spygate and Deflategate impacted both Belichick and Kraft’s chances, but the snubs still feel more vindictive than justified. The Patriots paid the price for those incidents, and that should not be used to dismiss everything they accomplished.
All told, this was Kraft’s first year as a finalist in the contributor category, but it certainly won’t be his last. He will earn that elusive jacket soon. In the past decade, 49ers owner Ed DeBartolo Jr., Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and Broncos owner Pat Bowlen have been inducted in this category, and no one deserves more to be next in line than Kraft.
