You're not wrong, but you'd have been really hard-pressed to find someone of significance who didn't already believe the Higgs mechanism was there. In the sense

You're not wrong, but you'd have been really hard-pressed to find someone of significance who didn't already believe the Higgs mechanism was there. In the sense that mass exists, there was a high degree of expectation there too. It's actually quite amazing to have so many of these recent discoveries, also be confirmations. It's been over a century of this, starting with Relativity.