Patriots Fans Got It Wrong With Julian Edelman Team HOF Selection

It is the fans who ultimately decide who will be enshrined in the New England Patriots Hall of Fame each year. It was announced Monday that the fans chose Julian Edelman for the honor.

They got it wrong.

Edelman certainly is a worthy inductee, but it shouldn’t have been his time to enter the Hall of Fame. The distinction should have gone to Adam Vinatieri, who Edelman beat out on the fan vote along with Logan Mankins.

Recency bias had to be at play with Edelman helping spearhead the second half of New England’s dynastic run with memorable performances. Vinatieri’s Patriots legacy was cemented over two decades ago. Perhaps some of what he did got lost with time. There’s a segment of Patriots fans who only know about Vinatieri’s clutch kicks through stories their parents tell.

Vinatieri was a Founding Father of the Patriots dynasty along with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. They don’t go on to win Super Bowl XXXVI over the St. Louis Rams — the franchise’s first Lombardi Trophy — without Vinatieri’s brilliance in the snow two playoff rounds earlier against the Oakland Raiders.

It is considered one of the best, if not the best kick in the history of the NFL. It was one of those sports moments that come around once every decade if lucky, where you can remember exactly where you were when the ball went through the uprights. But in this instance, you couldn’t tell if the ball made it through the two yellow pipes. You had to wait until the two referees standing at the base of the field goal posts signaled that the kick was good. And it was then that you realized Vinatieri pulled off the improbable, converting a 45-yard field goal in a winter wonderland with just seconds remaining in regulation to force overtime.

That kick changed the course of history for the Patriots. Vinatieri went on to kick one more field goal in the snow to take down the Raiders before booting the ball through the uprights at the Superdome as time expired to cap one of the biggest upsets in sports history.

The Patriots went on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII over the Carolina Panthers thanks again to Vinatieri’s clutch right leg. And then the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXIX over the Philadelphia Eagles the following year by a field-goal difference, courtesy of Vinatieri.

Much of the reasoning behind putting Edelman into the team Hall of Fame on the first ballot was him rising to the occasion in the biggest of moments, which he certainly did. But Vinatieri was like that on steroids. He was David Ortiz before David Ortiz.

Vinatieri, who joined the Patriots as an undrafted free agent in 1996, played 10 seasons for the franchise before departing following the 2005 campaign. He had a somewhat unceremonious exit from New England when he wouldn’t take Belichick’s lowball contract offer and signed with the Indianapolis Colts, who were the Patriots’ biggest rivals at that time. Vinatieri went on to play more seasons with the Colts — 14 in total — than with the Patriots. Perhaps that is something the fans still hold against him.

It would have been fitting this summer to have Vinatieri go into the Patriots Hall of Fame alongside Bill Parcells, who will go in as a contributor thanks to owner Robert Kraft overriding the induction process. Parcells brought in Vinatieri and almost cut him after a shaky first season. Good thing he didn’t.

Vinatieri is second all-time in scoring for the Patriots, only trailing Stephen Gostkowski, and his 599 career field goals — 336 of them came with New England — are an NFL record. But it is Vinatieri’s clutch gene that separates him from the mortals and from other legends, including Edelman.

Edelman will be the one to get the red jacket this year. If Patriots fans know what they’re doing, Vinatieri won’t be denied again.