Over 26,000 men have suited up for an NFL game. The Pro Football Hall of Fame has granted the sport’s highest honor to 355 of them, just a little over one percent.
Suffice it to say DeMarcus Ware is on the cusp of joining a rather exclusive club.
The longtime Cowboys defender and Super Bowl champion is widely expected to be among the names announced Thursday night as part of the Class of 2022 during the NFL Honors Awards Show. If selected for enshrinement, Ware will join an even smaller club: superstars who made it to Canton the first year they were eligible.
“When you think about ‘first ballot,’ first-time finalists,” Ware said recently on the Hall’s The Mission podcast, “it’s one of those things where when you get even mentioned with guys that have done it, it’s almost like there’s a moment of silence because there’s no words that can even describe the feeling of, ‘You know, all the guys that I looked up to, all the guys that I wanted to be like, the models that, sort of, made football. Now you have an opportunity to be there.’ I’m getting goosebumps even just talking about it right now.”
Cowboys fans got a similar thrill watching Ware terrorize opposing quarterbacks for nine seasons in Dallas. By the time he departed for a three-year stint with Denver to end his career, he was the Cowboys’ all-time leader in forced fumbles, tackles for loss, quarterback hits, and- the category he’s most known for- sacks.
“I was a silent assassin, and my mission was getting to that quarterback,” Ware explained. “And I did that. With a smile.”
Ware recalled coming into the league as a youngster out of tiny Troy University and being shown the ropes early on by Cowboys players who were, often literally, larger than life.
“I remember Larry Allen came to me, and he said, ‘Hey, I want you to come work out with me.’ So I’m, like, swallowing my spit: ‘Whatever you need me to do. Please.’ He said, ‘Put five plates on there.’ I thought, ‘Five plates? You can’t split five plates.’ No, he meant five on one side, five on the other side. And I put the chains on there. I tried to showboat and assist him in racking it, and he racked it off himself. He benched it ten times. I didn’t know he was the strongest man in the NFL at the time; I didn’t know anything about that. I found out about that right then. And he said, ‘When you see this, this is what you’re going to see every day when you go up against me.’ I was, like, peeing on myself when he told me that. But that was like that awakening, that you have arrived into the NFL. And you’re going against the best. And you’re going to be taught by the best. And I would learn from the best.”
Learn, he did. Ware’s 138.5 sacks place him ninth all-time in football’s official record books. But even going back and factoring in all the sacks that happened before 1982, when they became a real stat charted by the league, Ware still sits at 13th.
He was named to the Pro Bowl nine times, was a four-time first-team All-Pro, won two Butkus Awards at the pro level, and was placed on the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 2000s. One season after winning a Super Bowl with the Broncos, Ware signed a one-day contract with Dallas to finally retire from the organization that had made him the 11th overall draft pick in 2005.
“It meant a lot to me because that’s the team that gave me a chance,” Ware explained.
But he nearly didn’t get that chance, at least not wearing the star. Bill Parcells, the head coach in Dallas at the time, wanted to select Shawne Merriman. Owner Jerry Jones used his veto power to push for Ware.
According to Clarence Hill Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a wager between coach and owner was born while the Cowboys were still on the clock.
“We’re sitting there, and I see him take this legal pad and, man, is he carefully writing out a contract-looking document,” Jones recalled. “And he put on there: ‘Should player not average 10 sacks a year in his first five years in the NFL, Mr. Jones agrees that Mr. Parcells and his significant other will get five trips a year on his G5.’ And he put signature lines down there.”
Ware ended up saving his boss a bundle on jet fuel.
He averaged 12.9 sacks per year across those five seasons. His total as a Cowboy- 117- represents the franchise record, no small feat considering some of the powerhouse Dallas defenses of the past.
“At first, I didn’t know exactly how big that star was until I got there,” Ware admitted. “And I told myself, ‘I want to etch my name in stone in this star, and I want it to last forever.”
Seeing his name added to the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor is, indeed, undoubtedly coming for Ware at some point in the future.
But a stop in Canton, where his face will be cast in bronze, seems likely to come first.
Ware’s golden ticket to football immortality is just waiting to be punched.
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