LOS ANGELES — It was a long wait, but Dick Vermeil can finally call himself a Pro Football Hall of Famer.
Vermeil was announced as part of the class of 2022 Thursday night in Los Angeles during the NFL Honors.
The former Super Bowl-winning head coach of the St. Louis Rams had a 15-year head coaching career in the NFL.
He spent seven years in Philadelphia, leading the formerly downtrodden Eagles to the Super Bowl in 1980. After a 15-year hiatus, Vermeil returned in 1997 to coach the St. Louis Rams. He spent just three seasons in St. Louis, but capped off his time there with a Super Bowl title over the Tennessee Titans in the 1999-2000 season with the "Greatest Show on Turf" Rams.
After a year away from coaching, Vermeil returned to the league to coach the Kansas City Chiefs for five seasons before retiring following the 2005 season.
For his career, Vermeil had a 120-109 record.
"I'm extremely grateful. For all the wonderful management teams, coaching staffs and players," Vermeil told 5 On Your Side's Frank Cusumano in an interview for Sports Plus in January. "There's 27 or 28 other NFL coaches in the Hall of Fame as we speak. I don't think any one of them needed as much help to get there as I did if I get there."
Vermeil joins former Rams players Kurt Warner, Orlando Pace, Marshall Faulk and Isaac Bruce in the Hall of Fame.
The "Greatest Show on Turf" Rams have cemented their status as one of the best offenses in the history of football.
"It has to be considered one of the best... It takes an entire organization. But I don't know of another offense off the top of my head that will end up having five Hall of Fame players on one side of the line of scrimmage. I don't know, maybe the Pittsburgh Steelers? I don't know, I haven't evaluated that. But the reason we were the 'Greatest Show on Turf' was because we had those five guys. Without those five guys, no matter how smart any of us are as coaches, we don't appear to be as smart as we were then," Vermeil said.
Along with his talents as a coach, Vermeil is also known for the relationships he made with his players, many of whom he stills keeps in contact with on a weekly basis.
"To me, coaching was always relationship building. The better relationship you had with people, the better the contribution they made to you and the better contribution I could make to them. Because you trusted each other and you didn't pull any punches. You didn't hide anything. You gave everything you had to give each other for no selfish reason," Vermeil said.
Vermeil and the rest of the class of 2022 will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Canton this summer.