The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

One of the few times I'll ever praise a Jet (even a beast like Mawae) but it was really cool of him to endorse Zach Thomas in his induction speech.

“Zach Thomas was my nemesis,” Mawae said about three-quarters into his 27-minute Hall of Fame speech. “My first year with the Jets before my first game we played against each other, (Coach) Bill Parcells told me in front of my entire team, ‘If you don’t block Thomas, we won’t win the game,’ and for the next 16 matchups I never forgot that.

“Zach was one of, if not the smartest player I ever faced. He loved the game, had fun when he played and brought the best out of me. When people ask me who’s not in the Hall of Fame and that I think should be here, it’s an easy one for me: number 54 from the Miami Dolphins.”

He even had Zach's picture posted on the screen as he spoke.

It's a shame Zach isn't in the HOF yet.

Appreciate that from Kevin Mawae. Hopefully Zach will make it soon. He absolutely deserves it.

Zach not being in the Hall already is ridiculous...

I think ZTs hurdle is he was the second best defensive lineman on a team whose DL didn’t scare anyone and didn’t accomplish anything.

While the HoF honors individual accomplishments not team accomplishments, leading your team to wins is part of being fame worthy. The teams Zach were apart of never made it to a championship and rarely won playoff games.

The Dolphins DL didn’t really scare anyone.  You didn’t hear commentators going on to great length about how great the Dolphins defense was and if they could just get similar production from the offense the team would be formidable.  Many years that was said of Jets or Baltimore.  But not the Fins.

And even among a team and unit that wasn’t impressive Zach wasn’t the best player.  JT was.  The key for every teams OL was accounting for JT, ZT was the second player discussed.

Also leadership is a factor.  ZT was never perceived as the leader on defense, once again JT. 

Only 5 players get in a year.  Hard to argue the ‘98-07 fins are underrepresented. 

You sound ignorant, which is acceptable because you aren't a fan of this team.  Let's use this as a teachable moment Pat's fan....

--ZT was a linebacker, not a lineman.
--Miami's defense was one of the best defenses in the league during his tenure
--The Dolphins DL scared many, Taylor was always leading the league in sacks, whoever what oposite of him, (many rotation of players) got their fair share of sacks, DT's were run clogging beasts.
--Again, JT was a Defensive end.  Thomas was a Linebacker, a middle linebacker at that.  Would you compare Michael Strahan to say Ray Lewis?  No, they have a different set of skills.
--Zach Thomas was a giant locker room leader
--Zach Thomas's numbers compare to Brian Urlacher's, a first ballot hall of famer.  In some instances, they surpass Urlacher's stats.

this .. all of this .. especially the last point .. ZT's career stats compare very well against Urlachers

Urlacher was the best player on a team that won the NFC championship on the strength of the defense.  ZT was the second best player on a team that never accomplished anything. 

You're just trolling at this point.

the hall of fame isn't a team award .. it's an individual honor .. so i agree .. good trolling and that's all it is

That defensive line didn't scare anyone??? Are you kidding me? That line also had Darrell Gardener and Trace Armstrong! Those boys were bad ass mo-fo's!!!

Okay, even though I hardly ever post here anymore nowadays (not because I don't lurk on here quite consistently still--because I most def. do that!  Pick it up more during foos'ball season, fa' sho', but on here quite a bit even during the *offseason* and when it's slow), I just had to post here, both about Zach and in regards to that D-line back in the day (late 90's/early 00's).

Zach most definitely belongs in the Hall.  As numerous others have alluded to already, Zach's statistics are very favorable if not even better than Urlacher's in some ways, and that's not a stretch, particularly in the first several years of Zach's career (dude started off his career like the damn fireplug cannonball he was!!   ;D ). He should be there.

And as far as our defensive "unit" not being impressive, Hoodie--look, I get it, it's pretty damn easy to have a revisionist historical stance when your team has won 6 SB's in the past 18 years, I do get it--I'm also a Spurs fan, so I can truly speak from a very similar perspective in that regard--but don't mistake that the 'Phins didn't have a borderline killer D back in the late 90's and I'd say in particular the early 2000's (Garrett--let's not forget our boy "T-Bow", Tim Bowens, either!!  ;D). 
At the end of the day, it is what it is, the team wasn't quite complete enough to really make noise come the playoffs, but it was multi-fold for why that was the case, some of foremost responsibilities lying with incompetent coaching/decisions (Wanny), as well as poor management decisions.  And as much as I still regard Fiedler for what he was at the time, and as gritty as he always was, he just didn't have it for what we needed in the big games either late in the season or the playoffs, to take the pressure off of the O-line and first Lamar Smith, and then later on Ricky (and let's not even go into the debacle that was the middle of the '02 season--still the best team I think I've seen Miami field since at least 2000--when Ray Freakin' Lucas had to play those 5 or so games in a row when Jay was injured).

*sigh* I digress--but regardless, Zach pretty much always was a beast, and Miami did have at their floor a top 6-8 defense and at their ceiling, upper-upper echelon D for a few year stretch there, and while JT did effectively take the mantle over later into Zach's career, I'll admit that, Zach was more than The Man before JT really took off.  That I can recall quite distinctly!!   :)

I am not saying Zach was an average player or the Dolphins defense was merely average.   But you would be hard pressed to find too many Sunday morning pregame day analysis where the question was “which teams have a defense that makes QBs quiver?” And the response be “Dolphins “  Likewise you rarely heard much about Thomas.  JT was always the man.  I know when the patriots boards did threads on the topic, “what player on another team you wish was a Patriot?” JT was often mentioned, but not ZT. 

One gripe that Patriots fans have is the dearth of HOF players from the NE 2001-2005 3 sb in 4 year dynasty.  The Steelers got 9 players in from their run in the 70s.  So far NE has 1 (and one more is a lock but still playing) .  You can make a very solid argument that the Patriots era is underrepresented. Hard to say the Dolphins are underrepresented from the same era.  I haven’t looked but I bet there was more HOF from the Dolphins early 70s than the Pats.  And for good reason. 

With Urlacher people talked about the Bears defense and Urlacher as the reason for the Bears defense being good. 

or maybe just maybe the football hall of fame celebrates individual accomplishment and not team success .. so what if your team won 4 superbowls in 5 years .. if you had a bunch of middle of the road .. "next man up", "do your job" players in a good system with a HoF QB holding down the fort .. don't be surprised that you get 1 or 2 players from that era in the HoF where other teams with 3-4 great players and complete shit around them get more HoF representation

If we are being honest, there are several very straightforward reasons why Urlacher is in the HOF and Zach isn't even close to getting in:

1) CHI had a more successful defense, making it to the SB even with a terrible offense.
In comparison, every year that Zach and JT were in the playoffs ended with the Dolphins getting blown out.  And this team-based metric is compounded by the next reason:

2) Urlacher was the best player on the Bears' defense.
You can get in to the HOF as the second-best player on a great defense (e.g. Ed Reed), but you can't as the second-best player on a defense that doesn't accomplish anything and repeatedly gets run off the field in the playoffs.  Which leads to reason #3:

3) Urlacher has a DPOY.
JT also has a DPOY, so he got in on the first ballot.  Without a DPOY, I think JT still would have gotten in, but it would have been a lot tougher.

So in summary, Zach has no DPOY and was the second-best player on a defense that never accomplished anything.  Even though he has good stats and lots of Pro Bowls/All-Pros, I think it's going to take a miracle for him to get in.  In hindsight, MIA's defensive collapse at the end of the 2002 season is probably the difference keeping Zach out of the HOF.

As is often the case spider was able to articulate what I was trying to say better than I was able to.

I think Hoodie is wrong here.

I'm OK with the argument that Zach shouldn't be in the hall.  But it's for none of the reasons you list.

That Dolphins Defense was among the league's best for many years.  We were winning with defense and only defense.  During those Wanny years, we were always winning those games 15-9.  It's not a team award and it shouldn't matter, but we had Thomas, Taylor, Surtain and Madison....we were incredible.

Urlacher, I believe, is in the Hall for, among other things, how marketable he was.  He was the face of the Bears and was on video game covers and stuff like that.  I just think he was a more known quantity outside of his local market.

He was more of a known quanity outside his local market because (1) the bears accomphished more and (2) was the best player on the team. 

I bet you can name the best player on the Patriots quicker than you can name the second best player on the Bills. Both are outside your market but are in your division.   

Or best defensive player on Rams vs the second best defensive player on the 49rs.  (other than sunstroke, who is very familiar with the 9s)

He wasn't known outside of his local market because the second best player on a team/unit that doesn't accomphish  anything is rarely noticed outside his home market.

Anyone voting on the HOF absolutely knows ZT. Hoodie's posts are laughable at this point. You really think he is an unknown to the people who vote. What point do you have other than trolling? They are not ignorant voters.

That position on the Dolphins was occupied by Jason Taylor.  He's the one who had a 30-foot animatronic statue in London.  And he's in the HOF.

Who was the second-best player on Urlacher's Bears... Lance Briggs?  He probably stands a similar chance of getting in as Zach does.

Yes they know who he is.  But the decided while he was playing that he wasn’t all that significant.  How do we know this?  Each of them is a reporter who every week needs to fill many column inches discussing not only the team they follow but also the team they are playing against and tidbits from around the league.  How much did they say about Zach?  Was he the lead each time their team went against the Dolphins?  When they needed to fill space from around the league how compelling of a story was the might Dolphin defense? 

The hall of fame is designed to honor the legends of the game.  Zach is not and never was a legend of the game.  To compare there are QB’s far more talented than Joe Namath that will never be inducted in the HoF, but there aren’t any QBs more legendary than Joe who have been left out.

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think our best player those years was actually Patrick Surtain.  But point taken.  It's just a weird stat to look at in the hall of fame.  I just think you look at how good a guy is, compared to how good another guy is, and take it from there.

My big beef with all of this is claiming that the defense wasn't perceived as good.  Yes, it's been a while, but in the those years, we were among the league's elite.

Defenses are ultimately judged by their accomplishments.  I think historically, that Dolphins defense will be regarded about the same as the "Lob City" Clippers: a contender at the time, but historically irrelevant.  Their high-profile failures in the playoffs  (and repeated late season collapses) basically erased any legacy they might have.

The defenses were good.  Nobody is claiming they were bad or even average. They were good.  But outside of a couple of years they didn’t rise to a level anyone would consider elite. 

And absent being elite and accomplishing something the SECOND best defensive player isn’t getting in.