DHL Dan CCCVI - Induction

In last week's Picked Up Pieces column, Shank looks forward to some awkwardness next year:

Patriots sure to be prominent when Pro Football Hall of Fame induction rolls around, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering why the Seahawks are only 3½-point favorites against the Patriots in Seattle on Opening Night . . .

⋅ The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s class of 2026 was inducted in Canton, Ohio, a couple of weekends back, and we got to see Adam Vinatieri take his rightful place in the shrine alongside new inductees Luke Kuechly, Larry Fitzgerald, Drew Brees, and Roger Craig.

With the Patriots set to kick off their regular season Sept. 9 in a Super Bowl rematch in Seattle, I got to thinking about potential Patriot presence on the HOF stage next summer.

Rules require that Tom Brady must wait until the summer of 2028. It’s the price he pays for playing until he was 45. The good news for New England fans is that all-world tight end Rob Gronkowski hung up his cleats a year before Brady and has a great shot to wear a gold jacket in Ohio next August.

But what about Bill Belichick and Bob Kraft, the bookend backbones of pro football’s greatest dynasty? Their omissions from the Hall last winter were a loud statement on the confusing process required to gain admission and the troubling tonnage of jealousy and hard feelings generated across Football America (Spygate and Deflategate, anyone?) during the two decades they dominated the sport. It’s also fair to say that since they won their last Super Bowl together, post-dynasty failures, salvos fired at one another, and non-football shenanigans have dented the legacies of New England football’s real men of genius.

I can't wait to see Belichick and Kraft pretend to like each other at this ceremony.