From @ToddBrock24f7: Jerry Jones announced that the franchise’s all-time sacks leader will become the 23rd person to receive the honor, at a game this season.
DeMarcus Ware became just the 371st member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame earlier this month, but he’s about to join an even more exclusive club.
The defensive superstar who wore a Cowboys uniform for nine illustrious seasons and remains the team’s all-time sacks leader will be inducted into the franchise’s Ring of Honor at AT&T Stadium at some point this season, said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
The announcement came Wednesday night at the team’s 2023 season kickoff ceremony, with Ware on hand to hear the news first-hand.
“I’m lost for words right now,” Ware said. “This is second time you surprised me. First of all, when you told me I was making the Hall of Fame and secondly, me getting into your Hall of Fame. Yes, Canton was great. But this is my home.”
Ware will become just the 23rd person to have his name affixed to the stadium walls. Darren Woodson was the last player chosen for the team’s ultimate accolade, in 2015. Former Cowboys executive Gil Brandt was the most recent inductee, in 2018.
But the moment, unfortunately, cannot and will not be about Ware alone, even though he very much deserves it. And that’s because of the thirty-year-old elephant in the room.
Coach Jimmy Johnson is still waiting. Jones famously promised on live national TV that the architect of the Cowboys’ dynasty of the 1990s would finally be welcomed into the Ring of Honor, with that proclamation coming during Johnson’s own Hall of Fame enshrinement week.
But that was two years ago.
“There’s no waiting as much as it is, how and when we do something,” was how Jones worded his latest attempt at an explanation. “The waiting term isn’t a product of this process. Everybody that is going to go in there in the future is waiting.”
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Ware didn’t have to wait very long at all, with Jones intimating that this was his time and his year.
Johnson, meanwhile, may have been onto something- in what was supposed to have been his year- when he asked of Jones back in 2021:
“While I’m alive?”
Other former Cowboys stars, on the other hand, seem to have also skipped ahead of Johnson in that waiting line.
The Cowboys owner vowed that quarterback Tony Romo and tight end Jason Witten will be in the Ring of Honor, too.
“They are both going in,” he said. “Write that.”
At this rate, they may also go in ahead of Johnson.
The exact date for Ware’s Ring of Honor induction ceremony has not been announced, though a club official said it would take place prior to Ware being presented with his Hall of Fame ring on Nov. 30.
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