Zach Thomas gets closer but not close enough in bid for induction to Pro Football Hall of Fame
He didn’t make it. Not this time. Zach Thomas was not selected for induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday.
But amid that disappointment come away with this truth: He got closer.
And it will eventually happen.
Thomas made it through the first round of voting when the field of 15 finalists was trimmed to 10. And after that, the voting went behind the proverbial curtains for counting by an accounting firm, and Thomas didn’t make the cut from 10 to the five eventual Hall of Famers.
Those five new Pro Football Hall of Famers are: Isaac Bruce, Edgerrin James, Steve Hutchinson, Troy Polamalu and Steve Atwater.
“I’ve said I was humbled and honored to be a finalist and I still feel that way,” Thomas said after Hall of Fame president David Baker called to tell him the bad news. “I’m disappointed that the knock on the door didn’t occur, but I’m happy for those who did make it.”
And it says here that someday in the future, hopefully soon, we’ll all be happy for Zach. Because he’s on that road to a gold jacket.
And what happened on Saturday, though an apparent setback, was also a setup for the future.
Why?
Because a foundation was laid on Saturday. And next year, Thomas will have a better chance to be inducted than he did this year, just as this year he had a better chance than last year.
The fact is the Zach Thomas Hall of Fame train has been picking up steam for several years now. Before 2019, Thomas’ candidacy was nowhere. And then he made the list of semifinalists. And this year he got not one, but two steps closer by becoming a finalist and reaching the top 10.
So maybe next year, folks.
Now comes the hard part: Why not this year?
The honest answer is selectors decided a cue had formed at the doors of the Hall of Fame in Canton. And Thomas simply wasn’t at the front of the line.
Look at the new inductees.
Atwater and Hutchinson had been finalists three times. Bruce and James had been finalists four times.
Zach? This was his first year as a finalist. And though he is deserving, it simply wasn’t possible for him to tackle the guys ahead of him like he tackled ball carriers 1,734 times during his 13-year career.
So it’s going to take more effort. More time.
I’m not saying the effort was lacking this year. The truth is the Miami Dolphins went above and beyond to help Zach’s Hall of Fame efforts this year.
The team provided the local selector, me, 50 iPads to bring into the room to hand out to the other selectors. The team wiped its playbook off those iPads just for this.
And then the club, led by the efforts of club employee Scott Stone and others, loaded Kevin Mawae’s 2019 Hall of Fame induction speech onto the tablet so selectors could see and hear Mawae make his pitch for Thomas as he did on the Pro Football Hall of Fame grounds last summer.
“Zach Thomas was my nemesis,” Mawae said in that induction speech. “My first year with the Jets before the first game we played each other, Bill Parcells told me in front of the entire team, ‘If you don’t block Thomas, we won’t win the game.’
“And for the next 16 matchups, I never forgot that. Zach was one of, if not the smartest players I ever faced. He loved the game, had fun when he played and brought the best out of me. When people ask me, ‘Who is not in the Hall of Fame that I think should be? It’s easy for me, number 54 from the Miami Dolphins.”
The iPad idea, by the way, was a sharp departure from usual Hall of Fame presentations that normally include the presenter reading reasons and quotes about his particular finalist so as to convince the other selectors to vote for his guy.
Despite the attempted innovation and Zach’s worthy resume, the votes simply didn’t add up in the end.
But don’t be sad. Zach wasn’t.
The fact is there were tears shed hours before the votes were known. Because Zach and his wife Martiza, their three children and their parents and Dolphins president and CEO Tom Garfinkel and club senior VP for special projects and alumni relations Nat Moore gathered inside Zach’s room at the Loew’s Hotel for hours Saturday afternoon.
And as the presentations were going on downstairs, the Dolphins’ room was where stories of Zach’s heyday and youth and humble football beginnings were told. And champagne flowed. And so did some tears.
After he found out he’d not made it, Zach and I spoke. I gave him some encouragement he didn’t really seem to need. He invited me to dinner at Joe’s, which I declined. Look, this guy was a professional’s professional throughout his glorious NFL career.
He learned then that one disappointment doesn’t tell the full story. So we’ll try again next year. And finish what has been started -- with that dinner at Joe’s and that induction in August 2021.
This story was originally published February 1, 2020 at 5:51 PM.
