DeMarcus Ware’s Hall of Fame speech included sobering story highlighting troubled past
The résumé is filled with numbers and accomplishments that have become part of football lore.
The 11th overall draft pick out of tiny Troy University. Nine Pro Bowls. Seven All-Pro nods, four of them as a first-teamer. The Cowboys’ all-time leader in sacks, with 117. An additional 21.5 of them with the Broncos, ranking him ninth all-time. Twice the league leader in the category. A Super Bowl ring while in Denver.
But one moment nearly prevented all of it from ever happening.
DeMarcus Ware delivered a powerful and emotional speech as he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this past weekend. And in between thanking his family members for their years of love and sacrifice and honoring several fallen teammates by pointing out the empty chairs he had left reserved for them, Ware shared the details- for the first time publicly- of one particularly profound moment that altered the course of his life.
“Often, there is something in our lives that pushes us to make a real change,” he began.
Wearing the custom-made gold jacket that signifies him forever as the 371st member of the sport’s most elite fraternity, Ware explained how a weekend at home during college nearly put him on a very different life path.
“I was attending a parking lot party,” Ware continued. “My uncle was in his car and, without warning, was knocked across the head with a gun. And a knife dropped to the ground. And I picked it up. And when I looked up, all I could see was the potential shooter’s eyes and a gun barrel pressed against my head. All I heard was my family say, ‘Don’t kill him.’
“There was an eerie silence, after which I simply said, ‘This isn’t me.’ And I dropped the knife. At that moment, I knew God had given me a second chance, and I had to do something with it. That was my turning point.”
Ware returned to the Trojans and was a nearly unstoppable force on the field. He eventually led the school to its first-ever bowl game appearance, was named the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year as a senior, and was a finalist for the Hendricks Award, given to the top collegiate defensive end in the country.
But even after being selected by the Cowboys in the first round of 2005’s draft, he admitted, that incident was never far from his thoughts.
“You can’t imagine how many years that night echoed in my head,” Ware told the crowd at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. “When I trained, I was motivated by the memories of those parking lot lights. And when I ran onto the field and the crowd cheered, those memories of those screams began to fade. Every sack I made helped to ease the memory of that frightful night and replaced it with positive energy.”
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That positive energy helped Ware fully escape his sometimes troubled past. Over his 12-year NFL career, Ware became almost as well-known for his ever-present beaming smile as for his ferocious pass rush skills.
Ware’s defining moment came in a dark parking lot as a college kid.
But Ware safely turned out of that parking lot, put himself on the road to greatness, and ended up in the Hall of Fame.
