Patriots’ Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft have to wait on the Hall of Fame. Tom Brady won’t. Here’s why

SAN FRANCISCO — Four days into Super Bowl week, the New England Patriots are currently 0-2.

Two of the best-kept secrets in Pro Football Hall of Fame history emerged Thursday night when Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft both failed to receive votes for induction into the Class of 2026. It’s a moment that will spark debate over the next 12 months for a number of reasons. The selection process was flawed, leaving senior committee players competing with coaches and contributors for votes. The 2007 spygate scandal was punished, or to some conspiracy theorists, biased against the Patriots due to a number of factors.

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I’ll let you choose your own reasons when it comes to Belichick and Kraft. But what you shouldn’t misunderstand is that this will turn into an even bigger embarrassment. Somehow, we see the bricks being laid will eventually become the inevitable roadblocks that prevent the greatest quarterback in NFL history from entering the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. That didn’t happen.

Brady will enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2028. This is his first year of eligibility. Most likely a unanimous choice (although HOF did not reveal the unanimous worshiper). If he doesn’t, I bet you’ll see some voters withdraw from the process.

So we can dispense with the debate over his candidacy, which has been filled with jokes, fake siblings and reasoning over the past few days. The trio making the biggest headlines?

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Brady told Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd in a tongue-in-cheek tone that doesn’t get enough coverage when coupled with this comment – “Maybe the trends aren’t good for former Patriots. Maybe I should be a little worried.”

“I think Tom Brady is going to be a fourth-ballot Hall of Famer right now,” Brady’s friend and former teammate Rob Gronkowski sarcastically joked to Fox News Digital.

Then there’s HOF wide receiver Terrell Owens — who has had issues with voters since it took three votes to get him — telling multiple outlets that Brady’s candidacy should be held to the same standards as Belichick and Kraft. If you take the time to actually listen to Owens, rather than just read the quotes, you’ll see that he wasn’t bombastic when he made these remarks. Instead, Belichick viewed it as a matter of reasonable inference given that his first vote was ruled out, which Owens called a “mockery” during a radio interview with Sports Illustrated.

Owens’ most succinct reasoning came during a radio interview with The California Post.

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“Honestly, if you look at it carefully, if Belichick isn’t on the ballot and Robert Kraft isn’t on the first ballot, Tom Brady shouldn’t be on it,” Owens said. “I’m just telling the truth. It’s not directed at him. When Tom Brady in 2028 How do you get him to play if Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick don’t go in the first round? Because let’s be honest, is Tom Brady a good quarterback? Yeah. He’s not a quarterback without Bill Belichick. So to me, why should he go in and those two guys shouldn’t? [first-ballot]any one. “

Of course, Owens’ comments drew the most attention. But his deductions and reasoning are really at the heart of the argument. But for Brady, it’s also flawed — because Brady’s candidacy isn’t subject to the same three-fifths candidate voting structure that played at least some role in the Belichick and Kraft incidents.

We’ll discuss this later.

First, we have to get back to the Hall of Fame’s lack of voter transparency, which only promotes conspiracy theories about what exactly happened to the Patriot candidates. Maybe voting transparency will change in the coming years. Perhaps the results of the vote will be made public and the blame may be pushed to the forefront of the 50-person panel. Whatever happens, outsiders should understand that this year’s results are not part of the package deal. There are only assumptions here, rather than evidence to support the idea that this is a grand conspiracy, leading to the idea that a group of voters are coalescing into a Machiavellian master plan to take punitive measures against Belichick, Kraft, and ultimately Brady.

In fact, if you talk to voters—and I’ve talked to some voters—what’s happened this year is just the intersection of circumstances and institutional flaws. Consider the math:

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You have 50 HOF voters. They were tasked with selecting three out of five candidates: Belichick (coaching candidate), Kraft (contributor candidate) and the three players put forward by the veteran committee, Roger Craig, LC Greenwood and Ken Anderson. Since 50 voters can only choose three candidates, this equates to 150 available votes.

It takes 40 votes to win admission to the palace. Roger Craig scored at least 40 points, as evidenced by the fact that he was the only one of five people inducted into the Hall of Fame on Thursday night. That means there are a maximum of 110 votes on the table – all of which are divided among the remaining four candidates. Getting another 40 votes out of the remaining 110 isn’t going to be easy, especially if you have some voters who mistakenly believe Belichick or Kraft will definitely join, and they’ll be one of the few outliers to give all three votes to senior committee players on the final ballot. This is where the system reveals its flaws. So did most of the voters I spoke to.

That doesn’t mean some voters won’t be opposed to Spygate to some extent, or even Kraft. But this presents a very reasonable counterargument to the idea that this is just a conspiracy involving the Patriots. We should note that Kraft has been eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame since 2013. He didn’t reach the finals until 2026, suggesting his first candidacy wasn’t as instant a success as Belichick’s.

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Now, back to Brady. Let’s put aside the fact that he is arguably the greatest quarterback and perhaps the greatest player and winner in NFL history.

Brady’s candidacy has a fundamental fact that solves the structural voting problem facing Belichick and Kraft: He will be on the ballot in 2028 as a modern player. Hall of Fame voters can vote for five of the nominees. Brady’s resume will eclipse every other modern player in his class, so if some extenuating circumstances don’t arise in the game, he shouldn’t have a hard time making it through the first ballot.

Among them, only Deflategate can compete with Brady. But here’s the question to use against him:

• Brady’s four-game suspension for Deflategate shouldn’t be a factor in automatic first-ballot disqualification for voters, as defensive end Julius Peppers, a first-ballot selection in the 2024 class, was suspended four games during his rookie season for using a banned substance. This is not an inconsequential suspension, either. At the time, Peppers led the NFL in sacks with 12.

• Brady’s alleged lack of cooperation in the Deflategate investigation — a crime the league said Brady committed when he had an aide destroy a cellphone containing text messages — also does not automatically disqualify him from the first ballot. Why? Because the NFL ruled that during the 2010 season, Brett Favre failed to fully cooperate with the league’s “sexting” investigation involving Favre and New York Jets employees. Favre was fined $50,000 by the NFL for his lack of cooperation and it was thought he might also face a suspension in 2011, but he retired after the 2010 season. Favre remains a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Of course, none of this explains what Deflategate looks like in the league’s rearview mirror. The investigation is riddled with leaks from league offices and advanced science that appear less credible as time goes on. Not to mention the reality that when the league spends a season measuring the PSI of football after a season, the resulting data is destroyed rather than released to the public. This raises the larger question of whether football inflation levels are reliable over the course of a specific match and in specific circumstances.

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Even in the face of this reality, “Deflategate” will remain a controversial part of Brady’s history. But it also became a grain of sand in the middle of his career. He played six more seasons after the scandal. He has since won three Super Bowls. He won the league MVP. He passed for 27,632 yards and 193 touchdowns back Bleed gate. The Super Bowl he won with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had nothing to do with Belichick and the Patriots.

All of which goes to show that he is in a category of his own. Not to be confused with Belichick. Not even compared to Kraft. And certainly not with the person he ends up sharing the vote with in 2028.

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That’s why Brady joined. Any thought to the contrary between now and then is just a waste of time and oxygen.