Bill Belichick stumps for Clarke Hinkle
The Patriots coach made the case for the legendary Packers player to be included in the NFL's top 100 players of all time.
By PackerAaron
The NFL is currently in the process of selecting (but thankfully not ranking) what it considers the top 100 players in the league's history.
The candidcay of a legendary Packers player reportedly got an assist recently from New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.
From Ben Volin over at the Boston Globe:
The NFL announced that it gathered a “blue-ribbon panel of former players, general managers, coaches, NFL historians, and media” to select the teams, but didn’t announce who was on the panel. Gil Brandt, a former Cowboys personnel executive with Tom Landry, said this past week that he is serving on the panel along with about 20 others, including Tony Dungy, John Madden, Art Shell, Dick Vermeil, Rick Gosselin, and, yes, Bill Belichick, the only current coach to be included.
Brandt said the panel already had one all-day meeting at NFL headquarters to discuss the All-Time Team, and a separate two-hour meeting to discuss the coaches. Belichick participated by phone both times, and was a valuable resource when discussing players from the early half of the 20th century. Brandt said Belichick was especially passionate about Hinkle, a two-way player for the Packers in the 1930s who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1964 as part of its second class. Hinkle died in 1988.
“He’s amazing as far as he can tell you about coaches and players back in the ’30s and ’40s without any problem at all,” Brandt said of Belichick. “And I mean, he can tell you Clarke Hinkle, what he did, how he was a fullback but when they were going to pass they moved him to tailback. This guy studied like it was for a math test. He was brilliant.”
The Packers legend certainly deserves to have his case for inclusion heard and it's nice to read the game's greatest modern coach feels compelled to make the case.
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