Duane Thomas: The NFL's sovereign citizen

The Cowboys thought they finally found their star running back in 1970. Two years later Duane Thomas was gone, leaving his teammates and management scratching their heads.

Duane Thomas was the MVP of Super Bowl VI. No really, he was.

I know the record books say that Roger Staubach won that honor in helping to lead the Cowboys to a 24-3 victory over the Dolphins in January 1972.

But it was Thomas, the 24-year-old, troubled—and troubling—running back who was the real MVP.

This isn’t my opinion.

There have been infamous examples of professional athletes being truculent with the media. Steve Carlton, Dave Kingman and George Hendrick in baseball. Allen Iverson in basketball.

But Thomas cranked it up a notch.

Thomas’s Season of Silence in 1971 gave Larry Klein, the editor of Sport magazine, the heeby-jeebies. For it was Klein’s magazine that selected the MVP of the Big Game. And it was Klein himself who was unsure of how Thomas would act at the post-season banquet in New York City when he was presented with the award.

So in “an abundance of caution,” Klein and Sport went with Staubach, despite Thomas rushing for 95 yards in 19 carries with a TD.

The difference between Thomas and the aforementioned athletes who had strained relationships with the media, is that Thomas didn’t talk to anyone in 1971.

Not his coaches. Not his teammates. No one.

Duane Thomas, who died on August 4 at age 77, managed to turn football, the ultimate team game, into a game of solitaire.

There’s a lot of '“what if?” when it comes to Thomas.

What if he hadn’t asked for a reworked contract after just one season in the NFL?

What if he hadn’t reacted so petulantly when that contract request was denied?

What if he didn’t sabotage his prime playing years with anger and disillusionment?

What if.

Thomas was compared to Jimmy Brown after his rookie season in 1970, when he rushed for 803 yards on just 151 carries (5.3 ypa) in the regular season, followed by 278 yards on 57 carries in the Cowboys’ two playoff games leading to Super Bowl V, which they lost to the Colts.

It was all there for the 23-year-old Thomas, who was from Dallas and went to West Texas A&M, to author a long, successful NFL career. The Cowboys, who for years had been without a true star runner to fit Tom Landry’s offense, finally had that guy.

Thomas could run past you and run through you. His debut in the league was on the cusp of the Year of the Runner (1972) and there was no reason to believe that he wasn’t going to be one of the young backs in the league who was going to take advantage of the NFL’s revived love affair with the run game.

But Thomas got stuffed at the line of scrimmage by himself.

After his brilliant ‘70 campaign, Thomas wanted a new contract. That three-year pact he signed out of college? Thomas wanted the Cowboys to tear it up.

That wasn’t how the Cowboys rolled. Team president and GM Tex Schramm refused to rework the deal. One fine rookie year didn’t merit that, according to Tex.

Thomas didn’t take that well.

He called Schramm “deceitful.” Cowboys Director of Personnel Gil Brandt was a “liar.” Head coach Tom Landry was “a plastic man; no man at all.”

Thomas held out of training camp in ‘71. Schramm traded him to the New England Patriots, which was football Siberia at the time.

Duane Thomas, who now had fully abandoned any concept of team, was in it all for himself. He was so incorrigible with the Pats that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle stepped in and reversed the trade within days, sending Thomas back to Dallas and RB Carl Garrett and the Pats’ 1st round pick in ‘72 back to New England.

Then Thomas went quiet.

He steadfastly refused to speak.

In his Year of Silence, Thomas had another good year: 175 carries, 793 yards, 11 TD. He added 205 yards in the postseason. The Cowboys went back to the Super Bowl. This time, they won it.

Tommy Brookshier, the former DB-turned-broadcaster, was the anti-Duane Thomas: gregarious, loquacious, always smiling.

Covering SB VI for CBS, Brookshier was in the Cowboys’ locker room after the game, interviewing players live on the air.

Over objections from his producers, Brookshier, in his exuberance, pulled Thomas in front of the camera. Duane Thomas, who hadn’t spoken to anyone all season.

Brookie showed Thomas some examples on the monitor of the Cowboys’ RB slashing through the Dolphins and running away from them.

“Are you really that fast?” Brookie asked.

As CBS execs held their breath, Thomas paused and said his first word publicly since the previous summer.

“Evidently.”

This is when you might be looking for a happy ending to the “Truculent Thomas” part of the story. This is when it would have made sense for Thomas to let bygones be bygones and return to normalcy.

Didn’t happen.

If anything, Thomas got more insubordinate.

Schramm traded him again—this time to the Chargers. This time, the deal stuck.

And Thomas stuck the Chargers.

He failed to report right away and got fined. He suited up for one game, but sat by himself, stretched by himself and never did get into the contest.

If 1971 was the Year of Silence for Thomas, then 1972 was the Year of Insolence.

He never appeared in a game in ‘72 and was traded to the Redskins, where coach George Allen never met a castoff that he didn’t like.

Thomas “resurrected” his NFL career in Washington, making it into 24 games over two years and rushing for 442 yards.

But of course Thomas couldn’t build on that. He wanted a raise.

Allen released him in August ‘75.

From there, Thomas bounced around like a rubber ball between the NFL, the Canadian Football League and the fledgling World Football League from 1975-79, his supposed prime years as an athlete.

The end finally came in 1979 when the Packers used Thomas as mostly a blocking back in the preseason before cutting him.

Long after his playing days were over, Thomas waxed philosophical about his time in the NFL, though falling short of issuing a Mea Culpa about his behavior, which labeled him as an “emotional misfit.”

"I recall those things, but the main thrust of what I remember is the meaning of friendship, the meaning of teamwork and dealing with adversity and accomplishing the goal. That was what it was all about with me. I was at peace with myself, even with everything that was going on."

Maybe that was good enough for Duane Thomas, even if it wasn’t for everyone else.