The last one was a doozy, to be fair. When the Dallas Cowboys enshrined Jimmy Johnson into the Ring of Honor (something that was more than way overdue) in late 2023, it felt like a lot of fans found their bliss on the subject. Jimmy was finally in. With all due respect, who cares what happened from that point moving forward?
Obviously that was not literally true, and more of an expression of joy for Johnson’s induction. It hasn’t even been a thousand days since then, but idle hands given the time
of year we are in.
Who should go in next?
Tony Romo and Jason Witten make the most sense
That answer is from a practical standpoint. You can make arguments for people who are long overdue like Johnson was, although obviously no one is quite in that same sort of situation, but there is some measure of reality involved in terms of what is most likely to happen.
Early on Friday we launched a discussion in The Feed where we asked the BTB crowd this exact question. Answers ranged all over the place, but everyone certainly agrees that Tony Romo and Jason Witten will one day be a part of the group.
Johnson was the last person inducted as noted, but he was one of two people inducted across 2023 as a whole. DeMarcus Ware got his due earlier that year.
Wikipedia does a great job with certain tables and this one showed the induction date for every member of the team’s Ring of Honor. There have only been two more inductions besides Johnson and Ware over the last decade, and only one of them was a player in Darren Woodson.
The colors highlighted are important context for this discussion. Yellow marks people in the Pro Football Hall of Fame while blue denotes people who have only reached the finalist level. It remains an atrocity that both Lee Roy Jordan and Darren Woodson remain without bronze busts.
Both Johnson and Ware were already HOFers when they were tabbed for the ROH. Gil Brandt was not yet in, but he would be chosen as a member just a few months after ROH induction. This has long been an argument for things like the ROH, that it helps boost credentials.
But dipping further back, the 2011 ROH enshrinement group of Drew Pearson, Charles Haley, and Larry Allen was comprised of players not yet in the Hall of Fame. All would eventually get in thankfully, but the point here is that you hardly have to have a gold jacket to receive a navy one.
With understandable respect to players of old who have cases for Ring of Honor inclusion, the next player in is likely one from Ware’s generation. His own inclusion seems to have been somewhat of a signal of that.
DeMarcus Ware was the first player or person put into the Ring of Honor who had nothing to do with the 1990s dynasty. We are all painfully aware that the franchise has not lived up to those standards in the time since, but the notion that Romo, Witten, Tyron Smith, or Zack Martin are not worthy of the Ring of Honor because they never lifted the Lombardi Trophy is silly.
It makes sense that the next person or group would come from that list, right? On some level it would be poetic for Romo and Witten to go in together, and maybe for Smith and Martin to do so as well. It took almost a decade into Ware’s retirement for him to get his moment and we are right about there with both Romo and Witten. It has only been a year since Smith and Martin called it a career.
Do you agree that Romo and/or Witten are the most likely people to get enshrined into the Ring of Honor next? Or do you have another thought?
Let us know in the comments down below.
