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Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame and its voters held a master class in bad PR and self-inflicted punishment over the last few weeks, first with the denial of legendary New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick then again with Patriots owner Robert Kraft — arguably the greatest head coach and owner in NFL history.
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith unloaded on the Hall of Fame after denying Belichick and Kraft … then really came unglued when the subject of former Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady came up.
It’s a fair question, now, to ask the unthinkable: could Brady be denied entry to the Hall of Fame when he’s eligible for the first time in 2028?
“(Belichick and Kraft) have already been denied first ballot entry and based on this trend, they’re going to do it to Tom Brady, too,” Smith said on “First Take” on Tuesday. “The Hall of Fame already doesn’t have any credibility and they’re a waste of time … they should be perceived as nothing. They’re a nothing entity. They don’t deserve our time. If (denying Brady) happens, you might as well burn the building down. It makes no sense. The Football Hall of Fame without Tom Brady makes no sense.”
Brady played 23 seasons in the NFL and is widely regarded as the greatest quarterback of all time if not the greatest football player of all time and holds the record for most Super Bowl wins (7) and appearances (10).
Not Everyone Agrees on Brady’s HOF Candidacy
Belichick, Kraft and Brady’s detractors have a couple of very concrete things they point to when they discuss why they shouldn’t be first ballot Hall of Famers — the SpyGate and DeflateGate scandals.
First to mind with Brady is DeflateGate, where Brady was determined to have ordered the deliberate deflation of footballs used in the 2014 AFC Championship Game win over the Indianapolis Colts.
Brady served a 4-game suspension to start the 2016 season. The Patriots were fined $1 million and stripped of 2 picks in the 2016 NFL draft, including their first rounder.
“I wouldn’t vote for Tom Brady either … and the DeflateGate thing is what really bothers me the most,” sports journalist Rob Parker said to host Will Kunkel on “Kickin’ It With Kunkel” on January 30. “To me, if you were honest with yourself and said this happened and you said, you know, ‘It was my fault, I asked the ballboy to take the air out I didn’t realize it was under league specification,’ you could buy that. Instead, Tom Brady says he doesn’t know the ball boy but has 100 text messages with him … that year, the Patriots had like one fumble. Will, you know how much easier it is to hold the ball if its softer. You just have so many different things along the way. I think the whole Patriots run is tainted.”Brady’s Career Unlike Any Other in NFL History
Brady went from a sixth round pick (No. 199 overall) in the 2000 NFL draft to football immortality, spending his first 20 seasons with the Patriots and the last 3 seasons with the Buccaneers from 2020 to 2022, winning the Super Bowl in his first season with the Bucs.
He holds almost every significant quarterback record in NFL history for both the regular season and postseason. That includes career passing yards, completions, touchdown passes, starts and wins. Brady also holds both regular season and playoff records for most quarterback wins and most Super Bowl MVPs (5). He is the only Super Bowl MVP for 2 different teams, has the most Pro Bowl selections for any player in NFL history and and was the NFL’s first unanimous MVP for the 2010 season.
Tony Adame covers the NFL for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Washington Commanders, Dallas Cowboys, Baltimore Ravens, Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos. A veteran sports writer and editor since 2004, his work has been featured at Stadium Talk, Yardbarker, NW Florida Daily News and Pensacola News Journal. More about Tony Adame
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