The Hall of Fame selection committee fared far better with modern era candidates than it did with the coach, contributor and senior candidates.
Drew Brees and Larry Fitzgerald get Gold Jackets in their first year of eligibility, with Luke Kuechly and Adam Vinatieri elected in their second. I thought they were the four best candidates on the 15 in the modern pool.
Out of the pool of three seniors, a coach and a contributor, only senior Roger Craig made it to make the Class of 2026 five-players deep.
I’m one of the 50 members of the Hall of Fame’s selection committee.
Willie Anderson, Terrell Suggs and Marshall Yanda are automatically modern era finalists next year as they were in the final seven but did not get 80 percent of the vote.
We blew it by not choosing Bill Belichick in his first year of eligibility. He’s the most successful coach in league history with six Super Bowl wins and he owns the second most combined regular season and playoff wins (333), just 14 behind Don Shula.
The length of our discussion about Belichick surprised me -- over 45 minutes. I thought he was an automatic and he had my vote from the time I knew he’d be on the ballot. I know many others felt the same.
But discussion since the news came out that he didn’t make it has explained how the miss was possible, if not reasonable. The required 80 percent means to get in a candidate needed 40 out of 50 votes.
Some voters prioritized seniors they expect will disappear from the ballot (Vahe Gregorian wrote he did this; Mike Chappel said he voted for contributor candidate Robert Kraft, not against Belichick -- but that meant he also voted for two seniors).
I urged against any sort of attempted ballot manipulation where a selector might presume Belichick was in and skip him, using a vote to try to benefit someone else. (This is not what Gregorian or Chappell did.) If too many of us did that, it could backfire and produce a horrific result. We should avoid getting near any such risk, I said.
There was probably some of that contributing to Belichick’s incredibly unfortunate miss.
Some may have been upset that the Hall just shortened the waiting time for a retired coach from five years to one. Others may have held Spygate against him – there is at least one staunch anti-cheating committee member who made a stance on that clear.
The idea that personal feelings against Belichick from anyone of the committee who's strictly a journalist factored into him missing out is crazy to me. Don't fans regularly give us a hard time for being detached? How much did any of us not based in New England actually deal with him, even the reporters with the longest careers? Not so much to have so much negative interaction to hold a grudge on something so important.
Kill the committee for our failure here, but not for the wrong reason.
I don’t like how the voting process for non-modern era players is set up. We should have overcome that regardless. It should be altered now.
Kraft also should have gotten in, given his leadership of a franchise that’s about to play in its 12th Super Bowl under his leadership and could win its seventh. (Voting was before the divisional round, for reference.) He’s been instrumental in NFL growth and was a crucial part of ending a lockout as the league and union battled in 2011.
But the pre-meeting campaigning for him in previous years was unfitting, and unlike anything done 
for any other candidate in my 11 years as a voter. And I can understand general voter preference for players over owners.
This was the second year of the current set up where a coach, a contributor and three seniors are put forward by three different subcommittees.
After their presentations, we are asked to vote for three of the five, and only candidates that garner 80 percent of the vote are selected for the Hall. If no one gets 80 percent, the top vote getter gets in.
Craig either got 80 percent or got the most. He's a deserving running back who did a lot to revolutionize the position, causing matchup issues as he posed a threat as both a runner and pass catcher for three Super-Bowl winners.
There was also plenty of support for L.C. Greenwood of the Steelers’ Steel Curtain and for Ken Anderson, who quarterbacked the Bengals.
As for Brees and Fitzgerald, I think it’s impossible to argue against either of them getting in as soon as they became eligible. They rank as second in all-time passing yardage and receiving yardage, respectively.
I felt Kuechly and Vinatieri cancelled each other out as first-ballot guys in 2025, and am happy to see them both get in.
Willie Anderson, Terrell Suggs and Marshall Yanda are automatically modern era finalists next year as they were in the final seven but did not get 80 percent of the vote.
The 15 modern era finalists were Willie Anderson, Brees, Jahri Evans, Fitzgerald, Frank Gore, Torry Holt, Kuechly, Eli Manning, Terrell Suggs, Vinatieri, Reggie Wayne, Kevin Williams, Jason Witten, Darren Woodson, and Marshal Yanda.
My vote down to 10 from there was: Brees, Fitzgerald, Kuechly, Vinatieri, Yanda, Witten, Wayne, Anderson, Manning and Wayne.
My vote down to seven cut Manning and Wayne.
My votes for three of the five seniors/ coach/ contributor were: Belichick, Craig, Kraft.
Some further notes:
Receivers: I feel as if Wayne and Holt were on track to get in before the voting change in 2024. Then we voted modern era candidates from 15 to 10 to five, and then voted thumbs up or down on the five with them needing to get 80 percent in that to get in, and the five typically got in.
Now I sense neither of them will get in as they will always chop away at each other.
Longevity: We've selected some players with short, but excellent careers like Terrell Davis and Tony Boselli. Frank Gore is a test of the longevity career. He was still topping 60 rushing yards a game in his 13th season. He averaged 4.6 a carry in his 14th. But his career is certain about compiling numbers over time. The first conversation of him was more favorable than I anticipated.
Re-nominate: The subcommittees used to be composed of largely the same people year-to-year, but now they rotate. Belichick and Kraft will be back. Sadly, oddly, if the format is not changed, the senior candidates should be irrelevant in the next go-round. Because it should take an act of God for Belichick and Kraft not to make it in 2027.
Manning: I didn't vote for Manning at all in 2025. I voted for him to go from the 15 to the 10 this year and was a bit surprised he didn't advance that one notch. I still have hesitations, but I felt things improved some for him in the conversation.
Coming: Among the on the runway... In 2027: Adrian Peterson, Rob Gronkowski and Ben Roethlisberger; In 2028: Tom Brady, JJ Watt; In 2029: Julio Jones, Aaron Donald.