Former New England Patriots defensive end Richard Seymour will have to wait at least one more year to enter the Hall of Fame after his latest snub.
The 41-year-old boasts impressive credentials but misses out for a third straight year. It clearly affected the 6ft 6in South Carolina native, as he took to Twitter to express his dismay with a cryptic message.
He does have a right to feel a little aggrieved with his stellar record on the football field. He was The Patriots’ No. 6 overall pick in the 2001 NFL Draft, and won three Super Bowl titles in his first four seasons with the team, anchoring their elite defense. He also earned seven Pro Bowl nods and was selected three times for the All-Star Pro first team. He was one of the NFL’s best defensive linemen for almost 10 years and was selected in the NFL’s Team of the Decade in 2010.
Seymour’s ongoing frustration at being omitted from the Hall of Fame is surely offset somewhat by his post-football career. He has been a big success around the poker tables since hanging up his helmet, with Poker.org detailing how he’s won big in many tournaments. He has over $600,000 in live tournament winnings, and he finished 131st in the 2019 WSOP. That might not fully make up for his continued exclusion, but it is nonetheless impressive. Whilst he can console himself with a degree of success in another field, he can also take solace from the fact that one of the greatest players of all time, seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady, supports his claim for a gold jacket.
Boston.com reports that last season, Brady penned a letter to voters outlining his support for Seymour last year, saying “I wouldn’t write if I didn’t fully endorse Richard Seymour as a deserving candidate for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It is hard to imagine that the New England Patriots would have won our first three Super Bowls without him. He was a cornerstone of that Patriots dynasty and deserves to be recognized for his contributions to football history.”
Brady’s voice is not alone. Coach Bill Belichick, the 68-year-old behind six of The Patriots Super Bowl wins, believes that the dynasty he has overseen would not have started without Seymour’s vital contribution. “Richard Seymour was unquestionably one of our key players and I do not believe we would have won three championships without him,” Belichick wrote.
Sadly, he did not make the cut this year. Instead, quarterback Peyton Manning, wide receivers Drew Pearson and Calvin Johnson, defensive backs Charles Woodson and John Lynch, guard Alan Faneca, head coach Tom Flores and executive Bill Nunn did. Of those eight, three were in their first year of eligibility.
It was not to be in 2021, and whilst Seymour is left to console himself around the felt of a poker table, he knows that his time will come. His response to missing out was that tweet which said: ‘timing is everything’, and it was met with a wave of support from Patriots fans. Perhaps the most telling response was that of ex-Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, who retweeted the post with some words of his own: ‘your time will come’.
Indeed, it is only a matter of time before Richard Seymour becomes a Hall of Famer, maybe even as soon as 2022.