Nearly three decades after his last NFL snap, Roger Craig is finally a Pro Football Hall of Famer.
It’s a deserved honor for the former All-Pro running back, who won three Super Bowl rings with the San Francisco 49ers and four Pro Bowl honors in the 1980s. Unfortunately for seemingly all involved, his election also came via a process that is suddenly a matter of controversy for Canton thanks to the exclusion of Bill Belichick.
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The 2026 Hall of Fame class consists of Craig, Drew Brees, Larry Fitzgerald, Luke Kuechly and Adam Vinatieri. The latter four were all elected the conventional way, as modern-era players who received at least 80% approval from the Hall’s selection committee, a group of 50 media members.
Craig, however, was one of three senior players on the ballot this year, alongside former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson and former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end L.C. Greenwood. Those three went through a different process.
Due to a recent rule change, non-modern-era players are now inducted through a ballot that has exactly five spots. Three are reserved for the senior players. One is for coaches, like Belichick. And one is for contributors, a catch-all term that could mean an executive, owner, official and more. This year, that was Patriots owner Robert Kraft. All five are nominated through blue-ribbon committees among the 50 voters.
So, Craig, Anderson, Greenwood, Belichick, Kraft. You could find voters who think all five of them are deserving Hall of Famers. However, the twist is that those five were actually in competition with each other, and Craig was the only one to clear the required hurdle.
Roger Craig making the Hall of Fame is a great thing. The process behind his election could use some work. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Let’s think about the math. Every Hall of Fame inductee must receive at least 80% of the vote from the 50-person committee. Each of those voters, however, gets only three votes max, because only a maximum of three of the five names can receive enshrinement. That means there are 150 votes total, and each guy needs at least 40.
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Belichick not making the Hall was a shocker for many, but once you learn the mechanics at play, how it happened starts to make a little more sense. As committee member Charean Williams of Pro Football Talk laid out, some voters simply see the senior players as more important to the game and will always vote for them.
This was the case of the first Belichick “no” vote to come forward, Vahe Gregorian of the Kansas City Star. Gregorian outright said he believes Belichick deserves to be a Hall of Famer. However, he also said he believed that Craig, Anderson and Greenwood all faced a longer road back to the ballot than Belichick, so he voted for the guys he thought needed it’s more.
All of that went into why I felt duty-bound to vote for the richly deserving seniors, who most likely won’t ever have a hearing again as more senior candidates enter the pool and fresh cases get made for others.
Meanwhile, Belichick is inevitable soon … as he should be. At the risk of contradicting my own vote, really, he shouldn’t even have to wait. I understand why people are offended that he isn’t going in the first moment he can.
In the end, though, 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.
It’s an understandable sentiment. However, Belichick not making it this time around will only make it harder for the senior and contributor candidates next year, and those could very well be deserving names too. It could even be Kraft again, and it’s entirely possible those two split the Patriots vote this year.
Weird, weird things can happen when the system incentives some voters against simply voting whom they think is most deserving of the Hall of Fame, such as the NFL’s all-time leader in Super Bowl wins among coaches not getting a bust because voters were more sympathetic to a running back from the 1980s.
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Craig making the Hall of Fame is an example of the system working. He didn’t steal Belichick’s spot, or anything like that. However, what’s become obvious in this year’s Hall of Fame voting cycle is that the new system could use some major changes. Just ask some of the voters.
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