Somewhere in America, Bill Belichick is wearing a navy hoodie, staring into the middle distance, and not reacting at all to the news that he did not make the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. This is because reacting would suggest emotion, and emotion is a luxury item, like wide receivers who smile.

Belichick being snubbed is one of those sentences that looks fake when you read it slowly. You have to blink. Six Super Bowl rings. Nine appearances. Two decades of being the looming presence that haunted the dreams of quarterbacks, offensive coordinators, and anyone who thought a three-point lead with six minutes left was “comfortable.”

And yet: not in. Not yet. Come back later, Bill. Take a number.

This is where football gets a little weird, because the Hall of Fame is supposed to be about what you did, not how people feel about you lately. Unfortunately, football fans are human beings, and human beings are extremely bad at separating the two—especially when the “lately” includes grumpy press conferences, late-career Patriots football that felt like eating unsalted crackers, and a post-NFL chapter at UNC that has already raised an eyebrow or seven.

Let’s start with the obvious part: six Super Bowls. That’s not a debate number. That’s not a “context matters” number. That’s a “please stop counting after five because it’s getting rude” number. The NFL has existed for more than a century, and the list of people who have won six Super Bowls as a head coach is extremely short. It’s just Bill Belichick. That’s the list. You can laminate it.

Some voters appear to have stared at his final Patriots seasons and thought, Huh. This doesn’t look great. Which is true! It didn’t! The offense was an endurance test. The quarterback situation was a rotating door labeled “Are You Sure?” The wins stopped coming. This is what happens at the end of dynasties. Rome didn’t fall because the aqueducts were slightly worse in the final year. It fell because time exists.

There’s also Deflategate, which has been dusted off again like an old VHS tape someone insists on rewatching. It’s fair to say it didn’t help Belichick’s vibe. But it’s also fair to say that if Deflategate is the reason you keep the most successful coach in modern football history out of the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, then we should probably reassess what the Hall of Fame is for. If this is a character museum, we need to remove half the building and add a lot more plaques that just say “It’s complicated.”

There’s a funny thing about recency bias. It sneaks in quietly. You don’t notice it happening. One minute you’re saying, “Of course he’s a Hall of Famer,” and the next you’re saying, “Well, you know, those last few years…” as if the previous 20 somehow expired.

This is also where the tiny details matter—the stuff that gets lost in ring counts and legacy arguments. The weekly Belichickisms. The way he turned anonymous players into crucial contributors and then calmly replaced them with someone you’d never heard of. The way he treated the salary cap like a puzzle instead of a rule. The way entire offensive game plans disappeared overnight because Belichick decided that guy wasn’t beating him today. The way he made the NFL feel colder, stricter, and smarter all at once.

If you want to be honest about it, Belichick didn’t lose his edge. The league caught up. It always does. That doesn’t erase what came before.