The Pro Football Hall of Fame will announce tonight at NFL Honors whether Adam Vinatieri has been elected. Patriots coach Mike Vrabel has no doubt that he should be.
Vrabel, who is now the Patriots’ coach and was Vinatieri’s teammate as a Patriots player, said today at Super Bowl LX that the last-minute 45-yard field goal Vinatieri made on a snowy night against the Raiders on the Patriots’ run to Super Bowl XXXVI may have been the single best play Vrabel has ever seen any player make.
“You always knew that when he kicked they were going to go in,” Vrabel said of Vinatieri. “That was just what we thought and knew if we got into those situations. The kick in the snow, that’s probably the greatest feat, one of the greatest feats I’ve ever seen on a football field. We could barely run, let alone approach and kick a field goal of that length.”
Vrabel believes that Vinatieri, who won three Super Bowl rings with the Patriots and one with the Colts, deserves recognition for how important his contributions were to those titles.
“During those years that I was here, Adam was certainly one of the players that meant a lot to our football team and our success,” Vrabel said.
Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft were reportedly voted down by the Hall of Fame selection committee, but there’s still a chance that the Patriots dynasty will get a representative in the Hall of Fame Class of 2026.
