Zach Thomas' popularity is off the charts. Here's how it reached this point for ex-Dolphins LB | Habib

CANTON, Ohio — Dan Marino and Larry Csonka.

If you’re making a list of the most popular Dolphins, you might want to stop there and fill in the name Zach Thomas.

As if you needed to be convinced, all you had to do was look around Tom Benson Stadium on Saturday as Thomas was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

No. 54 jerseys in aqua.

No. 54 jerseys in white.

Orange No. 54 jerseys were hard to come by, but it’s just as well, said the man himself (“They looked like pumpkins,” Thomas joked).

This is a time for Dolphins fans to feel joy. It’s not just because it might not be until some five years after Tyreek Hill retires that another Dolfans Takeover of Canton can happen. It’s that this Dolphin — their Dolphin — forevermore will have his bust displayed in the Hall of Fame, sharing a hallowed room with Don Shula and Marino and Zonk.

In those dozen years that Thomas wore those aqua and white (and occasionally orange) jerseys, he captured the imagination of fans. We knew that. But it’s in these past few years, when Thomas got so close to induction he could smell it, only to be turned away, that the full scope of his popularity crystallized.

Fans weren’t just hoping he’d get in; they were downright peeved (or another P-word) that he didn’t. They dreamed of smacking into electors the way Thomas slammed into all those ballcarriers en route to 1,734 career tackles.

More: Zach Thomas, Kevin Mawae: How epic rivals formed Hall of Fame bond for the ages

What they didn’t know was that their man was borderline amused by the uproar. It’s not that he didn’t appreciate it, quite the opposite. It’s just that Thomas felt he didn’t have the right to expect anything more from the game.

If you’re counting reasons beyond his play for his popularity, humility has to rank.

“I’m still that small-talent kid with big dreams,” Thomas told me years ago, words ingrained in my memory for how wrong and how perfect they are all at once.

Thomas was listed at 5-feet-11, if you looked at the rosters. NFL scouts? They didn’t look much, not at Thomas, just as college scouts didn’t before them. He barely had a nibble in the way of scholarships and was pick No. 154 in the 1996 draft. At that point, Thomas was closer to being Mr. Irrelevant than he was to the Hall of Fame. Not everything has changed. Of Saturday’s other honorees, every last one was drafted higher than Thomas.

Dolphins' great underdog story now in Canton

Everybody loves a great underdog story. This is ours, a kid landing in Miami just hoping to win a job, then accomplishing the sport’s highest honor. He hit the big time even though you’d never know it by his demeanor. He’s Mr. Everyman.

Except that Thomas is where he is because he always went above and beyond — extra film study, extra time in the weight room, extra care of his body. Not many fans knew that work ethic’s roots stretch to his grade-school days. He was diagnosed with auditory problems, meaning he heard words differently from others. To help him adapt, his mother made sure teachers assigned him a desk at the front of the classroom. To help himself, young Zach knew he had to buckle down at study time.

Any of this sound familiar, Dolfans?

Although Thomas was easy to root for, the NFL isn’t big on sentiment. You still have to throw the ball, catch the ball or stop someone from doing it. Time after time in Thomas’ rookie season in 1996 and beyond we saw quarterbacks take the snap and hand off. We’d see the back get wide-eyed over the hole in front of him.

You know what comes next. Sure, you do.

Stonewalled. There’s that little guy in the middle again. Anybody see where he came from on that play?

To all those too young to have watched Thomas play, know that if you’re having trouble picturing the above scene, it’s because no Dolphins linebacker since has done it the way Thomas did.

Hall of Fame electors at last have acknowledged that.

The rest of us, well, were smart enough to catch on ages ago.

Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at  hhabib@pbpost.com and followed on X/Twitter @gunnerhal.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: How popularity of Dolphins' Hall of Famer Zach Thomas continues to soar