The Moment
Dick Vermeil, Super Bowl-winning coach and gold-jacket member himself, is looking around the Pro Football Hall of Fame and basically saying: this place feels wrong without Bill Belichick.
In a new interview with TMZ Sports published January 29, 2026, Vermeil called Belichick’s first-ballot snub a flat-out failure of the Hall’s revamped voting process for coaches. He said the new system “does not work” if someone with Belichick’s resume doesn’t get in.
Dick Vermeil Says He Feels ‘Guilty’ Being In Hall of Fame Without Bill Belichick | Click to read more 👇 https://t.co/TsNWGh5CmX pic.twitter.com/DsDPTOMp6O
— TMZ Sports (@TMZ_Sports) January 29, 2026
Vermeil went even further, admitting he feels “guilty being in there with him not there,” and lumped other big-time coaches like Mike Shanahan, Tom Coughlin, and Mike Holmgren into the same overlooked pile.
As for the old scandals fans still bring up around Belichick? Vermeil brushed them off as “baloney,” saying that after coaching in the league since 1969, he’s seen plenty of things that weren’t legal or ethical that never made headlines and were just as serious as what’s now being used against Belichick.
His bottom line: if arguably the greatest coach of all time isn’t in Canton yet, the Hall itself has a problem.
The Take
I don’t say this lightly, but the Hall of Fame is starting to look like the Oscars in that year they pretended Meryl Streep didn’t exist just to “spread the wealth.” Cute idea in theory. In reality, it makes the whole exercise feel unserious.
Bill Belichick is not some fringe debate. He’s not a “well, it depends how you define greatness” bar argument. This is the man with six Super Bowl wins as head coach of the New England Patriots, two more as a defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, and one of the best sustained runs in modern professional sports. According to NFL record books, he’s right near the very top of the all-time wins list for head coaches, playoffs included.
And he’s on the outside looking in while people debate if the process was fair? Please.
Vermeil’s point about coaches getting squeezed while star quarterbacks sail in tracks with what we’ve all watched for years. The Hall loves a glamorous narrative. Wide receivers, pass-rushing machines, anyone who looks good on a highlight reel – they get the fast pass. Coaches? Suddenly we need “more time to evaluate their legacy.”
More time for what, exactly? Belichick’s work is not a mystery. We’ve had two decades of him in a cutoff hoodie terrorizing the AFC East. You can hate his vibe, you can remember every icy press conference and mumble, but the results are not in dispute.
Now, the elephant in the room: Spygate and Deflategate – both long-documented league controversies, both forever stapled to his name. If you’re a fan who still can’t get past that, I get it. Sports are emotional, and the Patriots spent a long time as the NFL’s movie villain. But here’s where I land: if the league punished him and the team and then let him keep coaching and winning, you don’t get to turn around twenty years later and pretend he was too toxic to honor.
Either what he did was disqualifying – in which case, say that clearly and apply it evenly across eras – or it was punishable but not career-ending. You can’t quietly benefit from his dynasty for ratings and then clutch pearls at the Hall’s front door.
Vermeil also slips in another truth that older fans know in their bones: football has never been as squeaky clean as modern PR would like it to be. That doesn’t mean “everyone cheats, so who cares.” It does mean the Hall has already welcomed plenty of imperfect icons whose careers came with controversy attached. Singling out Belichick as the one who must be made into an example starts to feel less like integrity and more like performance.
At some point, keeping him out doesn’t protect the Hall’s standards. It undercuts them. If fans have to mentally add Belichick to the museum in their heads because the selectors won’t do it on paper, the Hall of Fame stops being the final word and turns into a very nice suggestion box.
Receipts
Confirmed
- In an interview published January 29, 2026, Vermeil told TMZ Sports he feels “guilty” being in the Hall of Fame while Bill Belichick is not, and said the Hall’s revamped voting system for coaches “does not work” if it leaves Belichick out.
- Vermeil named Mike Shanahan, Tom Coughlin, and Mike Holmgren as other top coaches he believes are being squeezed by the new process, according to the same interview.
- The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s official Class of 2026 announcement did not include Bill Belichick, confirming he did not make it as a first-ballot candidate.
- According to NFL.com’s historical stats and records, Belichick has six Super Bowl titles as a head coach with the Patriots and two as a defensive coordinator with the Giants, and ranks near the top of the all-time wins list for NFL head coaches.
Unverified / Opinion
- How much Belichick’s past rules controversies actually influenced specific Hall of Fame voters has not been publicly documented; most discussion so far is informed speculation and anonymous chatter.
- The idea that the Hall is favoring “flashy” players over coaches is a read on recent classes and comments like Vermeil’s, not a stated policy from the Hall.
Sources: TMZ Sports video interview with Dick Vermeil, January 29, 2026; official Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026 announcement, January 2026; NFL.com coaching records and Super Bowl histories, accessed January 2026.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you dipped out of football somewhere between Terry Bradshaw and Taylor Swift, here’s the quick refresher.
Dick Vermeil is a longtime NFL head coach best known for leading the St. Louis Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf” to a Super Bowl win after the 1999 season. He also coached the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2022.
Bill Belichick is the famously stoic head coach who turned the New England Patriots into an early-2000s dynasty, winning six Super Bowls with Tom Brady and dominating the AFC for about two decades. Before that, he was the defensive mastermind behind two Giants titles in the 1980s and early ’90s. He parted ways with the Patriots after the 2023 season.
His legacy, though, comes with baggage. The Patriots were disciplined by the NFL in the mid-2000s over a videotaping scandal widely known as Spygate, and later over game-ball tampering allegations nicknamed Deflategate. Both were heavily covered, heavily argued, and remain a big part of how some fans judge Belichick.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame, based in Canton, Ohio, is supposed to represent the best of the best – players, coaches, and contributors. In recent years, the Hall changed how it handles coaches and contributors, combining them into a revamped group with limited slots. Vermeil’s frustration is that in this new setup, elite coaches are getting pushed aside while other types of candidates still glide in.
What’s Next
Belichick is not going to be locked out forever. That’s not how this works, and everyone from Vermeil to casual fans knows it. The more realistic question is how long the Hall is going to drag its feet and how awkward it’s willing to look in the meantime.
Vermeil said he trusts Hall president Jim Porter to eventually fix the coach problem, which suggests we may see more tweaks to the selection rules in the coming years – especially if big names like Shanahan, Coughlin, Holmgren and Belichick keep stacking up on the outside.
For now, all eyes will be on future Hall of Fame finalist lists and modern-era classes. Does Belichick make it in on his second try? Do voters quietly acknowledge they overcorrected? Or do they dig in and insist that making the greatest coach of his generation wait is some kind of moral stand?
Because here’s the real tension underneath all this: fans 40 and up watched Belichick dominate their Sundays for two decades. We don’t have to like him to recognize he shaped the modern NFL as much as almost anyone alive. You can’t tell that story honestly without his face somewhere in that Canton hallway.
So the Hall has a choice: get ahead of the conversation and honor the career everyone saw with their own eyes, or keep pretending this is just about “process” and not about sending a message. Only one of those options respects the history it’s supposed to protect.
Where do you land – should Bill Belichick have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer, or do you think making him wait is a fair way to account for the scandals that came with all that winning?
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