First known Bill Belichick dissenter explains his…
The first known Bill Belichick dissenter has been revealed.
The Kansas City Star’s Vahe Gregorian got here out as one of at least 11 Pro Football Hall of Fame voters who didn’t put Belichick on their ballots after the stunning news that the eight-time Super Bowl champion failed to make the cut during his first time up for induction.
In a column for the Star on Wednesday, Gregorian, who has lined the NFL for almost 4 many years, wrote that the snubbing had nothing to do with Spygate, Deflategate or Belichick’s notorious testiness with the media.
Instead, the longtime sports activities columnist said, the Hall’s “curious selection dynamics” led him to put his votes elsewhere.
Head coach Bill Belichick of the North Carolina Tar Heels seems to be on prior to the sport against the Virginia Cavaliers at Kenan Memorial Stadium on October 25, 2025 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Getty Images
Separate from the 15-man modern-era poll, voters are tasked with deciding on candidates from a particular, five-person pool made up of three classes consisting of three senior candidates, a contributor, and a coach.
Belichick, this yr’s teaching candidate, was competing with senior nominees Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood and the contributor nominee, who occurred to be longtime Patriots proprietor Robert Kraft.
Voters had been allowed to choose just three candidates from this area, with the nominees needing 80 % (40 out of 50) of the votes to make it into Canton, Ohio.
Despite only having three votes, all 5 males, Gregorian said, had been deserving of the Hall in his eyes, and he had initially assumed he could be voting for Belichick on his first poll.
But when it got here time to vote, Gregorian said he felt “duty-bound” to vote for the three “richly deserving” senior candidates — Anderson, Craig and Greenwood — who could possibly be staring at one of their last probabilities at the notoriously tough-to-get-into HOF.
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick speaks into his headset on the sideline during the first half of an NFL soccer recreation against the New Orleans Saints, Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023, in Foxborough, Mass.
“All three have been long deserving of induction in the Hall. All three have been, well, snubbed for decades.”
Gregorian cited NFL greats like Albert Lewis, Otis Taylor and Jim Tyrer, who all fell short of the Hall during their flip as senior candidates, as gamers he didn’t need this yr’s trio to endure the same destiny.
Belichick’s induction, Gregorian wrote, “is inevitable soon,” and he said that he understood why the soccer world was so outraged at the outcomes.
“At the risk of contradicting my own vote, really, [Belichick] shouldn’t even have to wait,” he wrote. “I understand why people are offended that he isn’t going in the first moment he can. … I felt more compelled by what I perceive to be last chances and looming lost causes within the system as we have it — a system I hope the Hall will see fit to change now.”
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