CANTON, Ohio — Larry Fitzgerald walked into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Friday as an enshrinee for the first time, and the place still got to him. The former Arizona Cardinals star entered the darkened bust room and saw Cris Carter immediately, then pulled out his phone to photograph Terrell Owens as he toured the bronze faces that define the sport’s inner circle.
“It hits you when you walk into that room,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s rarified air. It’s like walking into a room at 10,000 feet, you know?”
Fitzgerald was in Canton with Drew Brees, Luke Kuechly and Roger Craig for the Hall’s logistics visit ahead of induction week. The group, which did not include Adam Vinatieri, learned how long their speeches should last, what would happen during induction week and made final tailoring touches on their gold jackets. Hall employees and fans clapped when the four walked in the front door, and Fitzgerald was introduced as Pro Football Hall of Famer No. 385.
The visit carried extra weight because Fitzgerald had been inside that room before, but never as one of the 400 men honored there. He had toured it during Cardinals trips for the Hall of Fame Game and during induction ceremonies for Kurt Warner, Dwight Freeney and Jared Allen. This time, the bronze busts were no longer something he was passing through on the way to someone else’s night.
That shift was part of what made the morning feel different. Fitzgerald admired the sculptor’s work on long-haired players such as Troy Polamalu and Edgerrin James, and said his own bust will look like James’ by August. He had already received his Hall of Fame door knock from Randy Moss and was presented to the world as a Hall of Famer at NFL Honors, but the walk into that room made the honor feel immediate.
Barbara Smith, a Canton resident who volunteers at the Hall and guides visitors through it, made the scene even more personal. Smith wore a Larry Fitzgerald shirt with his face on the front and No. 11 on the back, with the tops of the numerals covered by his hair. She met Fitzgerald in 2017 at a Starbucks in Florida while he was with his two oldest sons and asked for a picture. Fitzgerald looked at her Hall shirt and told her, “I’m going to need your help getting in there,” Smith recalled. “I told him, ‘I don’t think so, Larry.’”
Smith came back in 2021 hoping to see Fitzgerald when the Cardinals played in Cleveland, and she still wondered how he had slipped out of the game’s spotlight without a formal sendoff. “He never really announced his retirement, did he?” she said. For now, the answer is that the career ended in the cleanest way possible: not with noise, but with bronze, a gold jacket and a room full of nearly 400 men who already knew where he belonged. His actual induction ceremony comes in August, two days after his former team plays the Carolina Panthers in the Hall of Fame Game.