CANTON, Ohio — By the time Devin Hester took the stage Saturday afternoon, walking to the glass dais with a sparkling “goat” pendant on the chain around his neck, he already had been through an intense cycle of emotions.
Hester had almost six months to process his place in football lore and inclusion in the sport’s most prestigious fraternity. He spent much of 2024 immersed in an often gratifying but sometimes awkward celebration of his greatness, a commemoration of the 11 seasons he played in the NFL, eight with the Chicago Bears.
Four times an All-Pro. Twice a member of the All-Decade team. Included on the NFL’s 100th Anniversary All-Time Team in 2019. This weekend, though, Hester officially took his place as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
For months, he had soaked in that recognition. The moment last winter when Edgerrin James pulled into the driveway of Hester’s home in South Florida to deliver the news of his Hall approval? Pure satisfaction.
The moment a few weeks later when, during Super Bowl week at the NFL Honors show in Las Vegas, Hester rose onto a smoke-filled stage with the other six members of the Class of 2024? Validation.
And Friday night’s dinner inside the Canton Memorial Civic Center, where Hester was formally presented his gold Hall of Fame jacket — but only after losing himself in a tear-filled embrace with mentor Deion Sanders? Well, that was unbridled fulfillment and pride in all the work and perseverance he used as fuel.
“Even these last six months can’t fully express the buildup of emotion,” Hester said earlier in the day Friday. “I would say it has all been building since the moment I fell in love with football at the age of 5 or 6 years old. It’s all the things I had to go through in the process of getting to where I am today. It’s overwhelming.”
Hester’s reflections during the final leg of the lead-up to his Hall of Fame enshrinement were like so many of his returns during his NFL career. Fast, dizzying, exhilarating, full of heart-pumping joy.
As he spoke Saturday at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, offering a 17-minute, thankful address to his coaches and closest family members, the admiring eyes of so many former teammates were on him. Brendon Ayanbadejo, Jason McKie and Johnny Knox. Israel Idonije, Charles Tillman and Patrick Mannelly. Hunter Hillenmeyer, Tommie Harris and Craig Steltz.
Former Bears coach Lovie Smith was sitting near the stage. Hester’s longtime special teams coordinator Dave Toub was nearby. Matt Forte was there too.
“I always marveled at all the natural talent Devin had,” Forte said. “But I also saw the hard work and dedication he used to nurture that talent to become the greatest ever at what he did.”
Added Mannelly: “Everything about Devin was electric. He did things on a football field no one has ever done. And we were all lucky enough to witness it.”
Such testimonials provided a poignant reminder that the brilliance of Devin Hester was always best defined by the powerful feelings he evoked — the eagerness and excitement he stirred in teammates; the trepidation he caused opponents; the giddy anticipation he lit inside Bears fans waiting to see his next magic act.
Thousands of them were in attendance Saturday, too, preceding the enshrinement speech of one of their favorite players with an energized chorus.
Hes-ter! Hes-ter! Hes-ter!
“I love this game more than I can say,” Hester told them. “More so, it loved me back.”
‘It shook the stadium’
Idonije has never forgotten the sensation of those 14 seconds in Miami Gardens, Fla., when anticipation instantly turned into adrenaline and a Super Bowl turned into a minor earthquake.
Idonije was right there inside Hester’s most iconic moment, the 92-yard kickoff-return touchdown to open Super Bowl XLI. He began that play as part of the wedge on the Bears return team and can be seen in the background of the photos and videos of Hester’s signature moment with his right arm in the air and index finger pointing skyward.
That was part of the euphoria as Hester dodged around and scorched past 11 Indianapolis Colts on his sprint into history. And as Hester broke free, Idonije felt an incomparable rumble beneath the Dolphin Stadium grass, tremors created on football’s grandest stage by a fearless rookie with a hunger for the game’s biggest moments.
Man, was that a feeling.
“The ground was literally shaking,” Idonije said. “With the roar of that crowd and all the jumping in the stands, you could feel it all through your feet. It just shook the stadium.”
That was just the 19th NFL game — regular season or postseason — that Hester had played in, and somehow that was already his seventh return touchdown.
Hester didn’t grow into an NFL standout. He exploded into a star. His fourth touch as a rookie, on a fourth-quarter punt return in his Week 1 debut at Lambeau Field, went 84 yards for a touchdown. In a 26-0 Bears victory over the Green Bay Packers.
Because of course it did. That’s what Hester expressed Saturday during his enshrinement speech, explaining that he was never the waiting type. He had a 22-yard touchdown run, he said, on his very first carry in high school.
In his first college home game for the University of Miami inside the Orange Bowl in 2003, he took the opening kickoff back 97 yards for a touchdown against Florida.
“Every glimpse of me going to the next level,” Hester said, “it always happened (in the first game). It was a sign that let me know football was meant for me.”
Danger!
For many years, whenever an opposing special teams unit suffered even a minor breakdown in protection or coverage, it was like a gas leak. And Hester was the match.
Consider that now-legendary Monday night in Glendale, Ariz., in 2006. Hester was still just a rookie with five career games and 21 punt returns to his name. But Arizona Cardinals punter Scott Player knew the danger. Player had seen the explosiveness on tape. He had watched Hester torch the Packers for that 84-yard touchdown in his NFL debut. He had listened to Cardinals teammate Antrel Rolle — a teammate of Hester’s at Miami — warn him about the rookie’s dangerous combination of speed, power, instinct and vision.
So with the Cardinals leading 23-17 late in the fourth quarter on “Monday Night Football” and fighting to hold off a rally, Player had zero intention of giving Hester the opportunity to win the game, instead hoping to angle his punt toward the Bears sideline.
But then it happened. The glitch happened. The rush happened. Hester happened.
James Prisching / Chicago Tribune
Devin Hester returns a punt 83 yards for a touchdown in the fourth quarter to complete a Bears comeback against the Cardinals on Oct. 16, 2006, in Glendale, Ariz.
Off the left side of the Bears line, Brendon Ayanbadejo used a “flash-and-go” move to create penetration. To the casual fan, Ayanbadejo’s rush was barely noticeable. But suddenly, Player’s preferred launch plan was gone.
“I had to change my angle and sling the ball back toward the middle of the field,” Player said. “Which caused the ball to carry. So one series of events led to a whole chain of events.”
Hester caught the ball at the Bears 17-yard line on a backpedal but quickly found his balance. Then he found his crease, his blocking and his path to a winning 83-yard touchdown. After trailing by 20 points late in the third quarter, the Bears somehow won 24-23 — without an offensive touchdown.
That right there, Idonije said, was a snapshot of the collective focus the entire Bears special teams unit enjoyed during a long run of success in the 2000s. The momentum just kept building.
“Focus is the operative word,” Idonije said. “When you know you are a part of greatness, when you’re doing things that have never been done before, when you’re breaking records and writing history, you fully understand the role you play in that. You are just more focused. You’re more locked in. You can’t be the reason this play doesn’t go for six. You have to get your block.”
Hester’s rare abilities sparked others to be at their best so he could perform at his. That right there is the holy grail of football, when all 11 players fully dial in on a common mission.
Such energy percolated all the way up to coordinator Dave Toub, who searched week after week for even the smallest of competitive edges — like the one Ayanbadejo provided in Arizona to help Hester punctuate that signature victory.
“Dave was scheming his ass off every week,” former Bears tight end John Gilmore said, “knowing he had a special player in Devin who everyone was willing to get up and perform for.”
The buy-in was powerful.
“I will tell you this,” Gilmore said. “Dave Toub never had to pull his hair out to get guys excited to play on special teams. Because when we stepped on the field with 23, in our brains we were juiced up to take one to the house every time.”
The eye test
Former Vikings punter Chris Kluwe doesn’t need long to ID his all-time favorite Hester return, a ridiculous 17-second, 89-yard magic act at Soldier Field in 2007.
Kluwe is quick to point out that he played 13 games against Hester under three special teams coordinators, who were constantly strategizing to disarm Hester like a bomb squad working meticulously to defuse the danger.
There was always a heightened level of concern during Bears week, a need to double- and triple-check every strategic thought that went into containing Hester.
Thirty-five of Kluwe’s 66 career punts in Hester’s direction were never touched by the Bears great, either fair caught, downed, angled out of bounds or caroming into the end zone for a touchback. Eleven more resulted in returns of 5 yards or fewer. Still, Kluwe knows he will forever hold the distinction of being torched for more Hester touchdown returns than any other NFL punter or kicker, a trifecta of scores etched into a Hall of Fame story.
As for the 2007 moment Kluwe remembers most? Well, he absolutely boomed his punt — 54 yards through the October air and angled nicely toward the southwest corner of Soldier Field with plenty of hang time to allow the Vikings coverage team its chance to surround Hester.
“Like honestly,” Kluwe said, “it was one of the best punts I’d ever hit.”
Hester was chasing the football as he caught it, his momentum carrying him from his 11-yard line back inside the 6.
Kluwe encourages anyone up for the homework assignment to review that sequence.
“Do it,” he said. “Pause the film. You can see there’s a moment when Devin brings it to like the 7 and there are literally four guys around him. I’m thinking, ‘Great. We’re going to tackle him at the 10. It’s going to be an ‘inside the 20’ (punt) and my net average is going to be great.’”
Nope.
Hester knifed between Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway and long snapper Cullen Loeffler. He then bolted right by Mike Doss and Vinny Ciurciu, hit the accelerator and found a convoy of Bears blockers ahead. Jamar Williams, Rod Wilson, Rashied Davis, Mark Bradley. Off they all went.
See. Ya. Later.
Kluwe surrendered in heavy congestion around midfield as Hester slipped out of one last tackle attempt and sprinted up the right sideline. The Vikings were left helpless.
“Literally we all did our jobs,” Kluwe said. “He just did his better. Like there was nothing we could do.”
That’s why so many players who competed against Hester knew even when they were playing that he was special and likely Hall of Fame-worthy. “It’s like the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity. I know it when I see it,” Kluwe said. “We knew it when we saw it with Devin Hester. He passed the eye test.”
Hester set an NFL record with 20 regular-season return touchdowns in his career, a total that doesn’t include his 92-yard Super Bowl dash. That total also doesn’t account for the dozens of 6-, 9- and 14-yard returns that left opposing coverage units pretzeled, scattered or in a frantic chase, like grade schoolers in a game of recess tag. And it doesn’t account for all the returns Hester had when he was barely caught or chased out of bounds by the final defender.
Even on Saturday, at an enshrinement ceremony just beyond the walls of the Hall of Fame, Mannelly found himself enthusiastically reflecting on special teams meetings inside Halas Hall.
“This here is such a fitting celebration of how special Devin is,” Mannelly said. “But in all honesty, being able to sit in those meetings as teammates and watching his returns, now that was special. Totally electric.
“It’s almost impossible to describe it because our jaws were so frequently on the floor. You weren’t believing what you were watching. You saw it with your own eyes. In person, on the field. But then Coach Toub has the clicker — rewind, play, rewind, play — and it was inexplicable. ‘Wait. He made that guy miss? He made that cut? How did he see any of that?’ It was indescribable.”
The soundtrack
Just as most Bears fans can describe exactly where they were and how they reacted when Hester returned the opening kickoff of Super Bowl XLI, former teammates still detail the exhilaration they felt, and still feel, whenever the first few beats of Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” — Hester’s adopted stadium anthem — pumped through the Soldier Field sound system.
“You’d be on the field and you would literally get goosebumps,” said Jason McKie, a close friend of Hester’s and a Bears teammate for four seasons. “You got goosebumps because you knew there was a chance Devin was going to do something electric.”
That song became an adopted anthem for Chicago and remains a time machine back into some of the most energized moments of anticipation in Hester’s career.
Even current Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren, who was inside the Vikings front office for Hester’s entire tenure with the Bears, recalls the visceral reaction to hearing “Crank That” from inside the Soldier Field press box.
“They would start to play Soulja Boy and I would literally hold my breath until he was on the ground,” Warren said. “And sometimes he wasn’t. I watched Devin single-handedly turn a game. And even when you stopped him, the pressure it put on you to stop him could really turn the momentum.”
Four of Hester’s return touchdowns came against the Vikings. In Week 2 of 2013, he didn’t reach the end zone but set the Bears single-game record for kickoff return yardage with 249.
Ridiculous, really.
“Every kickoff return was this moment of hope,” Idonije said. “Regardless of where the game was, you felt the opportunity for something big, for something ridiculous to happen.”
That was the power of Hester, the energy he could create through his presence and confidence alone. That, too, always has been one of the more charming aspects of his personality, the natural self-assurance he had that drew people in but that he rarely felt the need to amplify.
“Devin may be one of the coolest guys I ever played with,” Gilmore said.
Hester’s former teammates describe him as “suave,” “laid back” and “extraordinarily composed.” His combination of confidence, humility and passion without even a trace of arrogance was particularly rare for a star on his level. But it had a magnetism that created buy-in.
“It was never just about him,” McKie said.
Added Idonije: “But he knew. He always knew what he brought.”
Soaking it in
On Sunday morning, Hester had the honor of placing his bronze bust on the shelf inside the Hall of Fame Gallery where it will reside for eternity among what is now a group of 377 other football immortals. That’s heady stuff even for the most talented and confident of individuals.
“Every guy who paved the way for the National Football League and did something special is in one room,” Hester said. “And to be one of those guys up there is surreal. I still can’t believe I will be up there.”
An old Canton fable has it that, late at night after the doors to the Hall are closed and locked, the busts come to life and talk to one another, sharing jokes, old war stories and football wisdom.
Sights and sounds from the Hall of Fame as Devin Hester and Steve McMichael prepare for enshrinement
“I sure hope I’m not talking to the rest of the guys,” Hester cracked.
But if Hester’s bust does come to life, head nodding and dreadlocks flowing, he’ll certainly share his appreciation for being a part of this new Hall of Fame team with the same gratitude he had for eight of his years inside the Bears locker room.
That’s why throughout last week, Hester said, he was intentional in having his ears and mind open as he conversed with so many different Hall of Fame legends from across so many eras.
He wanted to soak in their advice, hear their stories, appreciate their respective paths to immortality. He also thoroughly enjoyed hearing them tell jokes and crack wise on each other, a ritual during the annual August reunion.
“You sit there as a newcomer and you’re like, ‘Wow,’” Hester said. “It reminds me so much of when I played football.”
There was something poignant to all that.
“When you retire from football, you don’t miss the game,” Hester said. “But you miss the locker room. You miss your teammates. You miss every moment in that room and the bonds you built.”
‘Football chose me’
In the years to come, Hester may return to Hall of Fame weekend with his chances to welcome a new class and expand on some of the sentiments he shared throughout last week.
He will likely talk about the origins of his love for the sport and the love of the actual football itself, tracing it back to childhood games of two-hand touch in the street in Riviera Beach, Fla.
“As kids we couldn’t kick the ball that far,” Hester said. “So we would throw it up high to make it look like a kickoff. And every time they would throw that ball high, out of 10 times, I would take about seven of them back.”
Hester can speak on his persistence, on the encouragement of his mom, Juanita Brown, and how, even during his roughest moments, he always came back to the feeling that football was his calling.
“I felt like football chose me,” he said.
Most of all, Hester will be able to detail his unique journey and describe how so many coaches and so many teams tried to find him a position that was just right for him, pushing to fully capitalize on his elite athleticism and obvious passion.
He played on both sides of the ball throughout his youth and at the University of Miami. He entered the NFL as a cornerback. He eventually transitioned to receiver and even led the Bears in receiving yards in back-to-back seasons in 2008 and 2009.
But those are now just footnotes inside his story. Hester found his true niche on special teams, mastered his craft and became the first return specialist to ever enter the Hall of Fame.
“You have to leave your options open,” Hester said. “Because God’s plan might be better for you. I wanted to be a running back. But God’s plan was that that wasn’t for me.
“Sure, I might have been the 107th or 108th best running back in the world. Or the 297th best receiver in the world. But instead I embraced God’s plan for me. Mostly, I accepted my calling. And by me embracing it? It made me the best returner to ever walk the face of this earth.”
