Bill Belichick’s greatest draft pick was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Thursday night.
No, they didn’t waive the five-year waiting period for recently-retired GOAT QB Tom Brady. He’ll eventually get his time in the Canton sun to once again tell his tale of going from humble beginnings as the 199th pick in the NFL Draft to the best to ever do it. It was an unbelievable, star-studded, ring-collecting ride that even TB12 acknowledges included plenty of luck.
Nope, it was Richard Seymour who was officially awarded his much-deserved, somewhat-delayed spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame Thursday night. After four years of candidacy without payoff, the three-time Super Bowl Champion, three-time All-Pro and seven-time Pro Bowler Seymour takes his rightful spot among football’s all-time greats.
Unlike Brady, Seymour arrived in New England with significant hope and expectation, and a little controversy mixed in for good measure.
Coming off a 5-11 first season in Foxborough, Belichick held the No. 6 overall pick in the 2001 NFL Draft. It was the most critical pick for Patriots since selecting Drew Bledsoe No. 1 overall in 1993. Hit on this franchise-altering opportunity and the player should be a foundational piece in the rebuild process. Miss and, well, that’s how jobs are lost, organizational regimes are changed and, in this case, dynasty dreams are dashed.
With many famously clamoring for a playmaking wide receiver to help Bledsoe do his job – aren’t we always clamoring for a sexy offensive playmaker at draft time????!!!! – Belichick took the best player he saw available, a 6-6 beast of a man out of Georgia who may not have had an obvious position to outsiders, but to the coach was THE guy for his budding 3-4 defense in New England.
The rest is literally NFL history. The early Super Bowls built on great defenses giving Brady time to evolve. The individual awards for Seymour. The development of the guys around him like Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel and so many others who have openly admitted the necessary role that Seymour had in their development into game-changing playmaking purveyors seemingly each January and February.
It all came thanks to Seymour. Seymour didn’t just meet the expectations that Belichick or anyone might have had for a No. 6 pick, he far exceeded them.
“He laid the foundation for a defense that helped propel the Patriots to three Super Bowl championships in his first four seasons in the NFL,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft said in a statement after Seymour’s Hall of Fame selection was announced. “Richard was the consummate professional and leader, always accepting the roles he was assigned, putting team goals ahead of personal ones, and in turn, raising the game of everyone around him.”
When the Patriots needed a nose tackle to do the dirty work in the middle of the front, Seymour did the job. When they moved him out to his natural 5-technique spot as a 3-4 defensive end he blossomed into one of the best defensive players in the NFL of his time, of all time. He was too big, strong and long for almost an opposing offensive lineman. He was too athletic for a man of his size to be blocked by just one foe.
Seymour didn’t put up flashy numbers. He never had more than eight sacks in a season, that career-high coming in 2003 when he finished second to Ray Lewis in Defensive Player of the Year voting.
But if you wanted a guy to build a defensive front around, a guy to make everyone’s job easier, a guy who could ruin a game for an opponent if they didn’t deploy necessary and multiple resources to challenge him, well then Seymour was your man.
“He’s really unlike any other player that I had coached up until that point. There haven’t been many like him,” Belichick said before Seymour was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame last fall. “We won a lot of games with him and certainly wouldn’t have won as many without him.”
If Seymour had been a classic, all-too-common NFL Draft top-10 bust – like wide receiver David Terrell two picks later! -- the Patriots dynasty would have been stunted or very likely derailed. But he wasn’t a bust or even a run-of-the-mill player, rather he earned a bronze bust among the greatest players in football history.
Seymour was the best draft pick Belichick ever made. Selected to be great, that’s exactly what he was.
A football dynasty, Brady’s early rings and now a Hall of Fame career are proof of it.
