Duane Thomas obit

Former Cowboys running back Duane Thomas, part of franchise’s first Super Bowl win, dies at 77

 

He was not on the list.

Duane Thomas, a running back for the Dallas Cowboys when they finally broke through and won a Super Bowl to cap the 1971 season, has died. He was 77.

The team said Thomas died Sunday but had no other details.

Thomas was with the Cowboys in 1970-71, a pair of tumultuous seasons plagued by a contract dispute that once led him to call coach Tom Landry “plastic man.”

He was the first player to score a touchdown at Texas Stadium in 1971, when he led the Cowboys with 11 rushing touchdowns.

Thomas was born and raised in Dallas before playing college football at West Texas State in the Texas Panhandle. He was a first-round pick by the Cowboys in 1970.

As a rookie in 1970, Thomas helped the Cowboys reach the Super Bowl, where they couldn’t shake the moniker of “next year’s champions” after losing to Baltimore.

After the season, Thomas’ demand for a restructured contract was rejected by the Cowboys and he was traded to New England. He refused to report to the Patriots, and the deal was voided by then-Commissioner Pete Rozelle.

Thomas refused to talk to reporters the entire 1971 season because he believed they had taken management’s side, but still played an important role for a team that beat Miami 24-3 for its first Super Bowl title.

The ill will between Thomas and the Cowboys continued, and he was traded to the San Diego Chargers before the 1972 season.

Thomas never showed up for training camp with San Diego and was sent to Washington. Thomas didn’t play in 1972 before spending the other two of his four pro seasons with Washington.

Thomas had 2,038 career yards rushing and 21 touchdowns, with 1,596 yards and 16 TDs coming with the Cowboys.

Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Thomas was an exceptional running back at Lincoln High School in the mid-1960s. He continued his success at West Texas State University in Canyon, playing fullback alongside Mercury Morris, while running through defenses for Joe Kerbel's teams. After a freshman year with just 10 carries for 42 yards, he led the country with 7.2 yards per carry on still-limited duty his sophomore season (83 carries for 596 yards). After 113 carries for 708 yards his junior year, he broke through his senior year with 199 carries for 1,072 yards and 10 touchdowns. He ended his college career with 396 carries for 2,376 yards (then 2nd all-time to Bill Cross, currently 8th).

In 1970, he played in the Coaches All-America Game.

Thomas was selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the first round (23rd overall) of the 1970 NFL draft. As a rookie, even though he did not start until the fifth game of the season, he led the team in rushing, while finishing eighth in the newly merged 26-team league with 803 rushing yards (second in the National Football Conference behind NFL rushing champion Larry Brown of the rival Washington Redskins) on 151 carries (a league-leading 5.3 yards per carry) and 5 touchdowns. At the end of the season, already being compared to Jim Brown, he was named the NFL rookie of the year. In playoff wins over Detroit and San Francisco, Thomas rushed for 135 and 143 yards, becoming the first rookie with two 100-yard rushing playoff games.

During the offseason Thomas requested his three-year contract be rewritten. When Cowboys management refused to renegotiate, he called team president Tex Schramm “deceitful,” player personnel director Gil Brandt “a liar” and head coach Tom Landry “a plastic man...no man at all." Following his refusal to report to training camp, Thomas was traded on July 31, 1971 to the New England Patriots with Halvor Hagen and Honor Jackson, in exchange for Carl Garrett and the Patriots' first choice in the 1972 NFL draft. Within a week, because of problems with the Patriots and head coach John Mazur, in an unprecedented move NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle voided part of the trade, sending Thomas and Garrett back to their original teams. The Patriots kept Hagen and Jackson in exchange for a second (#35-Robert Newhouse) and third round (possibly 1972 #64-Mike Keller) draft choices in the 1972 NFL draft. Thomas returned to the Cowboys, but decided to keep silent all season long, refusing to speak to teammates, management, or the media.

In October 1971, Thomas scored the first touchdown in the new Texas Stadium playing against the Patriots. That same season, Thomas led the league in rushing touchdowns (11) and total touchdowns (13). He also was named All-Pro and led the Cowboys with 95 rushing yards and a touchdown in Dallas' 24–3 win over the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI, the franchise’s first. When asked about playing in the “ultimate game” before the contest, he responded, "If it's the ultimate (game), how come they're playing it again next year?" In a postgame interview following that Super Bowl, CBS television announcer Tom Brookshier noted Thomas' speed and asked him, rhetorically, "Are you that fast?" Thomas responded, "Evidently." According to Hunter S. Thompson, "All he did was take the ball and run every time they called his number—which came to be more and more often, and in the Super Bowl Thomas was the whole show."

Thomas was reportedly voted as the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player by an overwhelming margin. Thomas, however, had boycotted the media throughout the season as well, and Larry Klein, editor of Sport, which presented the award, did not know how Thomas would act at a banquet in New York. With this in mind Klein announced quarterback Roger Staubach as the winner.

During the 1972 off-season he became even more isolated and insubordinate, so he was traded to the San Diego Chargers for Mike Montgomery and Billy Parks on July 31, 1972.

In August 1975, Thomas was signed by the Hawaiians of the World Football League to replace an injured Calvin Hill, although the Philadelphia Bell claimed they owned Thomas' negotiating rights after being released by the Washington Redskins. He was with the team for only 1½ months and was released in early October, just weeks before the league folded.

 

Career history

Dallas Cowboys (1970–1971)

San Diego Chargers (1972)*

Washington Redskins (1973–1974)

The Hawaiians (1975)

Dallas Cowboys (1976)*

British Columbia Lions (1977)*

Green Bay Packers (1979)*

 * Offseason and/or practice squad member only

Career highlights and awards

Super Bowl champion (VI)

NFL rushing touchdowns leader (1971)