If you thought the Pro Football Hall of Fame voting committee’s decision not to elect Bill Belichick for induction this year was egregious, Colin Cowherd believes you should be just as outraged that Robert Kraft was also snubbed of the honor.
Cowherd strongly defended Kraft’s Hall of Fame credentials on Tuesday’s “The Herd” after news broke that the New England Patriots owner won’t be inducted as part of the Class of 2026. In fact, he made a bold prediction about the Patriots and took a shot at Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as he explained why Kraft should be a Hall of Famer.
“If you had to ask me today who the next dynasty in the NFL will be, if I had to put my 401K on it, I would bet Drake Maye, Mike Vrabel, Robert Kraft and Josh McDaniels. This was a terrible organization before Kraft. They were the New Orleans ‘Aints — the Saints. They were terrible. They were cheap. Nobody wanted to play for them. Nobody wanted to scout for them. They won 10 games the next year. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I don’t think that’s luck. So, if you want to be outraged that Belichick didn’t get in, you might want to be a little bothered that Jerry Jones is in, and Robert Kraft isn’t.”
Kraft, who has been eligible to be inducted into the Hall of Fame for over a decade, was denied the possibility of getting his bust in Canton this summer despite having more Super Bowl wins (six) than any owner in NFL history. The Patriots have also made 11 Super Bowls since Kraft bought the team in 1994, with all those appearances coming after the Cowboys’ most recent Super Bowl win in the 1995 season. Even though Jones has half the Super Bowl wins as Kraft, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017.
Robert Kraft not voted into Hall of Fame, What does this say about the Patriots?
Beyond the head-to-head comparison with Jones, Cowherd believes that the Patriots’ sudden rise as one of the NFL’s premier franchises is a testament to Kraft and his Hall of Fame worthiness.
“‘Colin, c’mon. Owners don’t matter!’ Oh, really? Titans, Jets, Browns — perpetually hazmats. Dan Snyder took over a Washington football team that had a 30-year season ticket waiting list. Twenty-four years, Washington was a trainwreck. The NFL kicks him out. The next year, Washington was in the NFC Championship. I bet that’s just a nutty coincidence,” Cowherd said. “New England was awful before Robert Kraft got there. Five straight years of losing seasons. In fact, in that half-decade, they had the worst record in the league. Robert Kraft buys them. The next year, they’re 10-6. What are the chances? Pre-Belichick, with Belichick, post-Belichick — [Kraft has made the] Super Bowl.
“There’s a direct correlation between the quality of the owner and the quality of the management of the decisions that are made with people. Robert Kraft, 11 Super Bowls since he bought the team. That’s more than the rest of the AFC East, AFC North and the AFC South combined.”
Cowherd also made a cross-sport reference in order to show the importance of owners.
“Go look at baseball. The Yankees have as much annual revenue as the Dodgers, but the Dodgers have a better owner,” Cowherd said. “Excellence in every company that I’ve worked at starts at the top and it’s continually reinforced every day, top down. It doesn’t start at the bottom. Look at New York. George Steinbrenner owned the Yankees for 37 years and won seven World Series titles. It wasn’t managers. He had 23 different managers, if you count hiring Billy Martin multiple times. He had multiple GMs. He had multiple players on the rosters. The only commonality on the throughline was George Steinbrenner.”
Tom Brady on Robert Kraft not making the Hall of Fame
Kraft hasn’t experienced as much turnover in key roles during his time owning the Patriots, with Tom Brady and Belichick being the team’s quarterback-coach combo for nearly 20 years. But Kraft has now made it to the Super Bowl with three separate quarterback-coach combos. Drew Bledsoe and Bill Parcells helped New England reach the Super Bowl in 1996, while Maye and Vrabel have led the Patriots back to the Super Bowl in the first year of their partnership.
Kraft, though, has remained the one constant in New England over its impressive three-decade run, and Cowherd believes the Patriots’ owner should be honored for that.
“To be a dynasty, you can occasionally be lucky and win a Super Bowl and it all works out and you have a good roster,” Cowherd said. “But to be a dynasty, you need a great owner, great GM, great coach and a great quarterback. You need at least an A-minus in all of them.”
