Do managers fear appearing incompetent to HR?

Basic situation is like this, a team member has had very poor attendance for the last two years (he's been through 2 annual review processes). He's also flaky in other ways. The team all is tire of working with the guy (and he pawns work on us) and everyone basically wants him fire. We've already had two people quit, and they at least hinted they didn't like this guy.

So, we have some evidence and assume this guy has gotten "meets expectations" on reviews (and attendance is a considerable part of the review). The manager has apparently had some recent discussions with this guy about attendance because of the morale and resignations.

So, in our worker bee brains, we look at it like it should be easier to fire this dude than piss everyone else off and get them to quit. But as I've mulled it over, I've wondered if the manager has just kinda screwed himself and the team on this matter? Like, is it ever the case that the Manager is scared to go to HR and present evidence that the person should be fired based on attendance (and it's very much already documented because we have to badge into the building) when he's been giving them a good review for multiple years now? And appearing as just a total fool?

Some of this just doesn't seem like it should be so hard, and I want to understand.