If it’s true that the people who vote for the Pro Football Hall of Fame were making a “statement” by denying Bill Belichick a first-ballot ticket to Canton for the Class of 2026, they failed spectacularly.

But there’s a way for the voters — that is, voters in future elections — to make this right. And it’s an easy fix, really. All they need to do is keep on keeping Belichick out. As in next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. And forever. Now that would be a statement.

It’s not going to play out that way, of course. Belichick, who turns 74 on April 16, will eventually be enshrined in Canton, as well he should be. And the very moment he does get elected, it’ll mean the voters who kept him out this year will be exposed as a collection of pious, pearl-clutching hypocrites.

It was OK when George Burns (“Oh, God!”) and Morgan Freeman (“Bruce Almighty”) played God. It’s decidedly not OK for the Pro Football Hall of Fame voters to give it a go. They just don’t have the range. If they did have range, even an ounce of it, they wouldn’t have delivered Belichick a one-year punishment (or more?) as penance for a couple of cheap videotaping scandals, or because he either knew everything or looked the other way as Tom Brady’s “Deflategate” caper during the 2014 postseason was taking place. Gifted with range, the voters might have been able to factor in that Belichick won eight Super Bowls — two of them as the defensive mastermind of the New York Giants and six more as head coach of the New England Patriots — or that his 333 overall victories as a head coach are second only to the late Don Shula (347).

This one-year penance business reeks of score-settling, petty grudges and arm-twisting. It’s frankly as tawdry and unbecoming as anything Belichick ever did on or off the field, and it begs the question: Were the voters acting in the best interests of the NFL (or, “The Shield,” as the owners like to say as they peacock their way from season to season), or were they using this election as one last chance to throw a sucker punch at the Hoodie?

Belichick spent most of his career being curt and squirrelly with the media and was said to be hard on the help. But to suggest his personality played a role in this snub is laughable. Let’s maybe give the voters credit for that, at least. The football world overflows with thin-skinned, insecure coaches. Belichick was more of the same, except that he certainly put his back into it. As for Belichick’s stumbles as a first-year football coach at North Carolina, or having a 24-year-old girlfriend who seemed to have the run of the joint, that’s not a consideration when judging the man’s worthiness for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

But Belichick’s relationship with longtime Patriots owner Robert Kraft is a stickier sidebar in all this. They have been at odds for years, and the animosity continues to play out in public. Kraft is also up for induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And just as Belichick should have a bust in Canton, so, too, should Kraft. But if Kraft gets announced next week as a Hall of Fame inductee, the howling and finger-pointing will take over the remaining hours in the run-up to his Patriots playing the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX.

It’s important to note that Belichick and the Patriots were sufficiently punished for all the “Spygate” hoo-ha. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell fined Belichick $500,000 and the Patriots $250,000 for videotaping the New York Jets’ sideline early in the 2007 season. The Patriots also had to forfeit their first pick in the 2008 NFL Draft.

And Deflategate? A protracted back-and-forth investigation culminated with Brady being suspended for the first four games of the 2016 season, and the team being hit with a $1 million fine plus the forfeiture of a first-round pick (2016) and fourth-round pick (2017).

There’s some baggage there, even if Deflategate was really just a lot of, if you will, hot air. But what can’t easily be dismissed is that with the camera stuff, Belichick was revealed as something of a wannabe double-naught spy, and he paid a price for that.

The financial price was never a big problem for Belichick, a football lifer who has earned millions. The bigger price has been a hit to his reputation, except that there’s a limit to that: Belichick always paid his fines, made good with the house and continued to coach the Patriots. Goodell never delivered a lifetime suspension, and Kraft didn’t get around to making a coaching change until after the 2023 season, by which time Belichick’s skills and judgment seemed to regress a bit. Having the underqualified Matt Patricia and Joe Judge run the offense in 2022 did no favors for second-year quarterback Mac Jones and made Belichick look bad.

There’s always been squawking from the peanut gallery that Belichick failed as a head coach before he had Brady as his quarterback, then won six Super Bowls with Brady, and then went back to failing as a head coach after Brady moved on to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win another Super Bowl. All absolutely true. But to gobble up that little Sports Fun Fact is to assume Brady would have won six Super Bowls with the Patriots regardless of who the head coach was. Sorry, peanut gallery, but that’s not provable.

The only fact that matters insofar as Brady is involved is that together, as a coach-quarterback tandem, Belichick and Brady won six Super Bowls.

That should be enough to get both men into the Hall of Fame on the first try. But it didn’t happen for Belichick, this because a statement by the voters was printed out on a better stock of paper than Belichick’s resume.

What we seem to have here is a lot of people offering various versions of, “Oh, no, it wasn’t me who didn’t vote for Belichick.” Longtime NFL exec Bill Polian, for one, reacted to speculation he didn’t vote for Belichick by telling Sports Illustrated, “That’s totally and categorically untrue. I voted for him.” What we do know is that at least 11 people didn’t vote for him. That’s outrageous.

Blame the process. Blame the voters. Blame Belichick and his sullen personality, if you want. It’s an embarrassment for the Hall of Fame.