Gratitude & tears: ‘I finally got that win,’ Dolphins great Zach Thomas says as Hall awaits | Opinion

Zach Thomas never could stop the emotion in him from showing. He could stop the best running backs in the NFL better than any Miami Dolphins defender ever did, but the emotion beats him every time.

He knows he doesn’t stand a chance this coming Saturday in Canton, Ohio when he’ll be the first in the Class of 2023 to be inducted and to speak at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Heck, the eyes were moist just thinking about it on Sunday as he looked ahead to his life and career milestone that for him will literally as well as figuratively be a watershed moment.

“I’ve been trying to read things on not crying,” he said when asked at Dolphins training camp if he would during a news conference for him. “So if I look at your feet, not your eyes, when I talk about my family, forgive me.”

In the first row of seats not 10 feet from him sat wife Maritza and their three young children. His son and one daughter both wore No. 1 Tua Tagovailoa jerseys. The older girl wore the No. 10 of Tyreek Hill.

The children never saw him play, weren’t born when he retired. But they have been around for most of the 10 years their father was made to wait for the Hall to call his name before it finally did.

Asked how emotional he imagined his kids will be next weekend, he smiled, said, “They just want to go take a picture with Tyreek and Tua.”

Sunday was the first day of training camp that fans were allowed in, and thousands came on a day hot enough to fry an egg that was still in the chicken. They cheered Thomas as he stood on the practice-field sideline and hyped the crowd as the players stretched.

“We have the most talented roster in the NFL right now!” he boomed into a mic with that Texas drawl that never left him.

Thomas turns 50 in a month, on September 1, and makes no attempt to feign nonchalance over how much this Hall honor means to him. A Super Bowl ring eluded Zach, as it has every generation of Dolphins for about exactly as long as he’s been alive. But...

“Now I finally got that win,” he said of his bronze bust in Canton. “This is definitely a win. I’m very proud. I’m grateful I got to play a game for so long. The game owed me nothing. For me to be negative [about having to wait]? No.”

Thomas is the 14th Dolphins player in Canton and the 10th to have played significantly for the franchise. Don Shula and Jimmy Johnson -- who will introduce Thomas next Saturday -- are former Fins head coaches in Canton.

Thomas also looks like the last Dolphin who’ll get in -- at least in the foreseeable future. Not counting current players who may be on a Hall track, like Hill and Jalen Ramsey, the two currently-eligible ex-Fins with the best shot are receiver Mark Clayton and guard Bob Kuechenberg, but it’s been decades of rejection for both. Kuechenberg in fact has been a finalist eight times, the most ever by a player not eventually inducted.

So Thomas may be the last for awhile.

He also may be the greatest example of the underdog who made it, a too-short middle linebacker who ran through walls of doubt and disrespect on his climb to immortality.

Hardly recruited out of high school and drafted into the NFL by Johnson in the fifth round (154th overall) in 1996. He attended his first preseason Touchdown Club fans luncheon as a rookie and “saw the disappointment on the table’s faces” because they didn’t even think he was a player.

Thomas admits insecurity drove him. So did proving others wrong.

“I always made myself uncomfortable to get the most out of myself,” he said. “So many doubters. I always thought like I had haters, people who doubted me. That motivated me.”

Thomas still recalls fighting to hide the fact he was weeping during the national anthem of his first preseason game as a rookie, overwhelmed to have made it after such a climb.

The other day brought more emotion as a package from the Hall arrived at his home in north Broward and he opened it, surrounded by family. It was the iconic gold jacket, specially fitted for him.

Twenty-eight years of football. From the pee-wee games in smalltown Pampa, Texas to the heights of the NFL.

Zach Thomas will get all of 12 minutes next Saturday to try to capture all of the memories, to try to not forget any of the mentors, and to try to remember those tips he got reading up on how not to cry.

He will try mightily to fight the tears, too. But then he will see his wife and their three children, and he won’t stand a chance. Love and gratitude will demand those tears, and that small tremble in his voice, and it will be a beautiful thing.