Not the poster, but I don't understand the downvotes: this is exactly right. Higgs was awarded the Nobel after the mechanism he theorized was experimentally confirmed, and that is 100% the reason it took so long.
Right! Einstein didn't get the Nobel because the theory of relativity is awesome, he got it after Eddington observed gravitational lensing during an eclipse, confirming a key prediction.
Brilliant theorizing can be both brilliant and wrong.
