Cowboys Reveal Ring of Honor Plan for DeMarcus Ware & Jimmy Johnson
FRISCO - Pro Football Hall of Fame member DeMarcus Ware will be inducted into the team's Ring of Honor this season, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones announced on Wednesday. He also said, however, that former coach and two-time Super Bowl champion Jimmy Johnson - already a member of the Hall of Fame - will continue to wait.
While Ware is a no-brainer without a shred of controversy to be enshrined into the team's hallowed club, the exclusion of Johnson remains a burr under the saddle of Cowboys Nation. At the Hall of Fame Game in 2021, Jones announced on live TV that Johnson would indeed be going into the Ring of Honor.
Joked Johnson, "While I'm still alive?"
Two years later - and counting - Jimmy will continue to have to wait.
"Ware,'' Jones said Wednesday night of his decision to only induct one Cowboys legend this season, "is a player. Jimmy is not. I wanted to put a player in.”
Ware and fellow Hall of Fame newcomer Chuck Howley will receive their Hall rings at halftime of the Nov. 30 game when the Cowboys play Seattle at AT&T Stadium. It is assumed that Ware - a four-time All-Pro who topped the team in sacks for eight seasons, is the team's all-time leader in sacks and led the NFL with 20 sacks in 2008 and who was picked for the NFL's All-Decade Team of the 2000s - might be inducted that day.
Ware won a Super Bowl in 2015 as a member of the Denver Broncos and just entered Canton this offseason.
The Ring of Honor presently has 22 members, including 19 former players. ... and Jones has vowed to honor Johnson, the coach of two Dallas Super Bowl winners. But their complicated love-hate "frienemy" relationship is obviously in play here, as the owner has spent the last few seasons playing word games with his plans to recognize Johnson.
He's talked often about the circumstances not being quite right, including suggesting that he didn't want to put Johnson in in 2021, the year Jimmy was inducted into the Hall, because he feared it would suck attention from Canton.
But again ... he's putting Ware in despite the fact that he was inducted into the Hall in this very month.
And to our often-stated suggestion that moves like this be made while the honorees can enjoy them, rather than posthumously (Jones and Johnson are both 80), Jones replied with a smile, “He’s the youngest 80-year-old you’ll ever meet. I’m right behind him. This thing doesn’t run on an age meter.''
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