Cowboys legend DeMarcus Ware denied Pro Football Hall of Fame entry in first year of eligibility

D-Ware will have to wait at least another year.

Thursday night the 2022 Pro Football Hall of Fame Class was announced during NFL Honors.

Dallas Cowboys great DeMarcus Ware was eligible for enshrinement for the first time this year and objectively has credentials that place him among the greatest people to ever play professional football. As a result it seemed likely that he would hear his name called, but as fate would have it, Ware was denied entry into Canton.

DeMarcus Ware has multiple Pro Bowls and All-Pros decorating his list of credentials and capped them all off with a Super Bowl win when he left for the Denver Broncos. He has every measurable that voters tend to look for and was still left out.

It is possible that Ware got caught up in the politics of the way that that the Hall of Fame can be. Perhaps the voters (not agreeing with this logic myself, just exploring potential “explanations”) felt that other players had waited longer or that Ware was not a first-ballot HOFer.

Another theory is that we are starting to see the consequences of the Cowboys not having legitimate success as a franchise. Obviously Ware did win a Super Bowl, but he did so with the Denver Broncos. The majority of his career was spent on a team that did relatively little in the postseason. One has to wonder if this same sort of hurdle awaits the likes of Jason Witten, Tyron Smith, and/or Zack Martin when their times come.