PHOENIX — On the long, strange road to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Gary Zimmerman uncoiled his aching 6-foot-6, 294-pound body and fell asleep on a picnic table.
Back in the day, Zimmerman regularly reported to Broncos headquarters at 4:30 in the morning, when the doors were locked and only crickets were there to greet him. So the big offensive tackle would wait, dozing fitfully on a picnic table.
Which begs the question: Why?
“Oh, I don’t remember,” Zimmerman said Saturday, punctuating his answer with a sly chuckle. “Maybe I’ve been hit on the head too many times.”
But the real story explains how Zimmerman broke down the doors to the Hall of Fame, corrected a slight to Denver’s proud franchise and finally gave the Broncos another member of pro football’s most exclusive club alongside John Elway.
During the 1990s, Zimmerman and fellow offensive lineman Mark Schlereth raced to see which of their banged- up bodies could arrive first at the training room for repairs to remove dents suffered in the trenches.
“Zim refused to lose,” said former Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe, who to this day believes Zimmerman spent nights in the parking lot, gazing at stars from the car, to make sure he beat Schlereth. “Now, that’s competitive.”
The truth is even more remarkable. Zimmerman started 169 consecutive games and was the best tackle of the 1990s, despite a shoulder so shredded that pain made him an insomniac during his final years with the Broncos.
In fact, the 1997 season that ended with a Denver championship began with Zimmerman in retirement.
“There was no way I thought I could physically survive one more year of football,” he recalled. “But Elway called me on the phone in a moment of weakness . . .”
And the rest is the stuff of legend.
“He played left tackle with one arm,” said Elway, who trusted protection of his blind side to a left tackle who almost never practiced and often required a pain-deadening shot before kickoff. “That shoulder was so bad he could barely lift it. . . . But you know what? I never doubted him. I never even worried about it.”
Despite six Super Bowl appearances, the Broncos have been the most disrespected team in the NFL, with the annual vote for the Hall of Fame as predictably full of humiliation as the hard fall that awaits Charlie Brown when he trusts Lucy to hold the football for a field-goal attempt.
For too long, Denver got kicked in the teeth by the balloting, with repeated snubs eliciting the ire of franchise owner Pat Bowlen and Elway alike.
“That kind of taints the Hall of Fame, because of the politics involved,” Elway said less than 24 hours before the Hall worthiness of Zimmerman and Orange Crush hero Randy Gradishar were debated by electors.
While Gradishar again got the Charlie Brown treatment, perhaps Zimmerman cleared a path to glory for future Denver candidates such as Sharpe.
Zim always loved grunt work.
During the height of Broncomania, famously undersized offensive linemen operated under a self-imposed code of silence. It was as if they did not want to be seen. Or heard.
Zimmerman was the NFL’s largest mute button.
“We would’ve never won that first Super Bowl without him,” Elway said. “His tenacity is what got us over the hump.”
Zimmerman could shut down a pass rusher as loud and proud as Kansas City linebacker Derrick Thomas, but the greatest blocker in Broncos history never beat his own chest.
“You want a beer?” Zimmerman cordially asked when I walked in the door of his Oregon home on a winter day in 2003. His kind offer flattened me like a pancake block.
Why? During five seasons with the Broncos, I had not heard Zimmerman utter five words, and had always blamed it on his distaste for the fourth estate.
But even Broncos running back Terrell Davis seldom extracted more from Zimmerman than a nod and this gruff two-letter salutation: T.D. No hello. No chit chat.
“To be honest,” Davis confessed more than 10 years ago, as Zimmerman silently paved the road to the Super Bowl, “I don’t even know if he talks to his mother.”
This summer, Zimmerman will be introduced as a honored member in the Hall of Fame’s distinguished Class of 2008.
The acceptance speech alone should be worth the price of admission.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
