“Six Super Bowls Aren’t Enough?”: Bill Belichick Distraught After Not Getting Enough Votes to be a First-Ballot Hall of Famer

With each and every class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, there’s bound to be talk of potential snubs and mentions of those who are still waiting to get in. Unfortunately, it appears as if the 2026 class is now set to be overshadowed by one of the most egregious verdicts in recent history.

Despite winning six Super Bowls, three AP Coach of the Year awards, and maintaining a career win-loss percentage of .647 in the regular season for nearly three decades, the former head coach of the New England Patriots and current front man for the North Carolina Tar Heels, Bill Belichick, will not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

That’s right, the most decorated play caller in the history of professional football, the very one that dominated the NFL for the better part of the last quarter of a century with Tom Brady, did not receive enough votes to become a member of the 2026 class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Suffice to say, everyone from the fans to former players and executives is irate, but according to ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham, there is a name to blame after all. And if their anonymous source is to be trusted, then that name is Bill Polian, the former general manager of the Buffalo Bills.

“Multiple sources told ESPN that Spygate and Deflategate, the twin cheating scandals during the Patriots’ championship run, came up in deliberations among voters,” the report discloses. “Polian… told some voters he believed Belichick should “wait a year” before induction as penance for Spygate, the 2007 cheating scandal that cost the team a first-round draft pick.”

Belichick himself was reportedly left asking, “Six Super Bowls isn’t enough?” and “What does a guy have to do?”

Considering that the franchise was fined half a million dollars for its involvement in the 2007 scandal, as well as the fact that Belichick received a personal fine of $250,000 from the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, it’s safe to say that both the 73 year old and football fans alike are of the opinion that he received a more than just punishment at the time.

So while Polian may have thought that he was dishing out a bit of justice, this seems to feel more like a case of double jeopardy than anything else.

For better or worse, however, what’s done is done. The Pro Football Hall of Fame will now have to live with the fact that it denied a first-ballot honor to the most recognizable head coach of the modern era, and that it is their reputation, not Belichick’s, that is now at risk of taking a hit.