DALLAS — DeMarcus Ware won a Super Bowl as a Denver Bronco after setting a storied franchise’s sacks record with the Dallas Cowboys.
There’s little question the outside linebacker’s Pro Football Hall of Fame celebration will be part Denver, part Dallas.
“He accomplished what he accomplished as a Cowboy,” said former teammate Marcus Spears, Ware’s fellow first-round pick with the Cowboys in 2005.
“But to go to Denver and in that short period of time make such a huge impact, and Denver fans and people in that area remember him as a Bronco,” Spears said. “It just tells you about him.”
Ware, the 11th overall pick out of Troy before Spears went 20th, was a salary cap casualty with the Cowboys in 2013 after compiling 117 sacks in nine seasons, three more than Hall of Famer Randy White’s previous club record.
With questions about age (32 at the time) and injuries, Ware joined Peyton Manning and the Broncos. Two years later, Ware sacked Cam Newton twice in Denver’s 24-10 victory in Super Bowl 50 when the Manning-led offense mostly just tried to stay out of the way of a dominant defense.
“I felt good. I still know I’ve got something in the tank,” said Ware, who is 13th on the all-time sacks list with 138½. “You get released, and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s the next chapter?’ And then I saw Von Miller.”
The second overall pick two years earlier, Miller was already a decorated edge rusher when Ware joined him. Miller battled injuries their first year together, then Ware did the second before getting healthy in time for the playoff run.
“I saw a young me,” Ware, who just turned 41, said of Miller. “I started to see things I used to do in him, and I started doing them again.”
Miller, who was MVP of that Super Bowl victory with 2½ sacks and two forced fumbles, still gets help from Ware these days with his pass rushing clinics in the offseason. He plans to be in Canton for the induction Saturday.
“I’ve been there for Champ Bailey. I was there for Peyton Manning,” said Miller, who was a 16-year-old high school player in the Dallas area the year Ware was drafted. “I think this one hit a little bit harder seeing my brother go into the Hall of Fame this year.”
When deciding his next move after the Cowboys, Ware remembers Manning telling him they could win it all together, and saying he wanted Ware to be the captain of the defense the same way Manning was with the offense.
“You get released, sometimes you go to a team, you’re like, ‘Where am I going to fit?’” said Ware, who retired following the 2016 season after earning the last two of his nine Pro Bowl selections in three years with the Broncos. “They let me know where I was going to fit before I even got there.”
One of Ware’s signature moments came in Dallas, not long before his first playoff victory during the 2009 season. Six days after a neck injury that left him temporarily without feeling in his extremities, Ware played in New Orleans, and had a victory-clinching strip sack to beat the 13-0 Saints.
Then-New Orleans coach Sean Payton remembers putting together the game plan, and making the mistake of assuming Ware wouldn’t play.
“Then here comes game day, and he’s running through the tunnel,” said Payton, who is entering his first season as coach of the Broncos. “I’m like, ‘You have to be kidding me.’”
Payton, who was on Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells’ Dallas staff when Ware was drafted, learned his lesson. The Saints capped that season with a Super Bowl upset of Indianapolis, assuming along the way that injured Colts pass rusher Dwight Freeney would play, which he did.
“I know how much Bill thought of him, as did anybody who had a chance to play with him or coach him either here in Denver or in Dallas,” Payton said. “I think you saw right away all those traits that you’re looking for.”
After a wild-card victory over Philadelphia, the Cowboys were blown out in Minnesota by Brett Favre and the Vikings the year New Orleans won the Super Bowl.
Dallas didn’t make the playoffs again before Ware’s release, leaving him with one victory in three trips to the postseason, despite four All-Pro nods and a 20-sack season in 2008.
Longtime Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, who might soon join Ware in the Hall of Fame, and quarterback Tony Romo never got a shot at a title. Neither did Spears.
Ware likes to say he believes his career was defined by playing for others as much as he played for himself. There was another meaning for that when he showed up for his only Super Bowl.
“Every day, they would let me know,” said Ware, who made the Hall of Fame in his second year of eligibility. “Before the game, they were like, ‘Dude, man, I feel like this is my opportunity to soak in a Super Bowl.’”
Ware clearly had no hard feelings about the ending in Dallas because owner/general manager Jerry Jones is his presenter in Canton. Ware said it’s because Jones communicated with him about why he was being released.
Jones issued a heartfelt statement after the release, as he did later with two other stars in receiver Dez Bryant and running back Ezekiel Elliott.
“I just had to ask, ‘How did I get here to not have DeMarcus Ware and give us a chance to win it?’” Jones said. “And it was what you have to do to manage the salary cap. And so you just can’t have it all.”
And that’s why Denver gets to share in the Hall of Fame celebration.
“When you play for teams that have done so much for you on both ends, you’ve got to show them love,” Ware said. “And that’s what I’m doing.”
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AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Stapleton in Denver and AP Sports Writer John Wawrow in Buffalo contributed.
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