Bill Belichick is just as confused as everyone is about his Pro Football Hall of Fame snub.
The eight-time Super Bowl champion coach was “puzzled” and “disappointed” after finding out Tuesday that he fell short of the 40 of 50 votes needed to make the Hall during his first go-round on the ballot, according to a bombshell report from ESPN.
“Six Super Bowls isn’t enough?” Belichick asked an associate, per the Worldwide Leader, referring to his six titles in New England. “What does a guy have to do?”
A three-time Coach of the Year winner, Belichick also won two Lombardi Trophies as a defensive coordinator with the Giants and won 302 career regular-season games, the third-most all-time.
A separate anonymous source told ESPN that Belichick believes that “politics kept him out.”
“He doesn’t believe this is a reflection on his accomplishments,” the source continued.
ESPN added that Spygate and Deflategate, the two cheating scandals that marred his time in New England, played a role in Belichick falling short of the voting threshold, according to multiple sources.
“The only explanation [for the outcome] was the cheating stuff,” one voter told the outlet. “It really bothered some of the guys.”
The football world was shocked as well, with dozens of prominent figures speaking out on social media after news broke on Tuesday.
Jimmy Johnson, who is in the Pro Football and College Hall of Fames as a coach, couldn’t believe the snub.
“I would like to know the names of the a–holes who did not vote for him,” he wrote on X, “they are too cowardly to identify themselves…”
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a future Hall of Famer himself, was flabbergasted as well.
“Insane… don’t even understand how this could be possible,” Mahomes wrote on X.
The voting pool is made up of at least one media representative from each NFL city and other at-large members.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
