In college he played fullback alongside Mercury Morris (who set NCAA game, season & career rushing yards), leading the nation in YPC as a sophomore. Thomas flourished after he took over the HB role his senior year.
Went 23rd in the 1970 draft, 2 full rounds ahead of where Morris had gone the previous year. Calvin Hill had won RotY and made the Pro Bowl after being taken 24th in 1969, but finished with a broken big toe.
Hill got hurt in Week 9 and Thomas was great down the stretch. In the playoffs he ran for 143 abd 135 yards. Then it got weird.
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."
That isn’t quite correct; he wanted more money on the original deal, the Cowboys wanted to extend him. Regardless, from there it went from bad to unprecedented.
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.
Hill tore his ACL and Thomas took over again. He didn’t score until October, but ended up with 13 TDs, leading the NFL with 11, and made All Pro. He had 95 yards and a TD in the Cowboys 1st Super Bowl win, 24-3 over Miami.
More oddities about that game & Thomas’ behavior:
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.
The biggest story of the year was Staubach finally being named the starter; 4-3 in games he shared leadership with Craig Morton, 10-0 after Landry made the commitment.
But Thomas, the silent man, was the second biggest NFL story that year.
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?"
After the game, CBS Sports analyst Tom Brookshier said to him, "Duane, you do things with speed, but you never really hurry a lot, like the great Jim Brown. You never hurry into a hole. You take your time, make a spin, yet you still outrun people. Are you that fast? Are you quick, would you say?" After pausing for a few seconds - an eternity on live TV -Thomas replied: "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."
It all fell apart after that. He became even more isolated and insubordinate. Traded to the Chargers, he never reported and sat out 1972. Traded again the next year to the Redskins, played sparingly (442 rushing yards in 24 games.) Asked for a raise, got cut, went to the WFL for a few weeks. Next year signed by the Packers, got cut, faded into obscurity.
He sold medical devices and ran a travel agency, living in New Mexico, San Diego and Arizona. Wrote a book with Paul Zimmerman, reconciled with Landry, Lee Roy Jordan and a few others, but never again lived in his hometown of Dallas, and rarely visited.
Read a few interviews with him over the years. Tumultuous career but he always seemed at peace with how it played out.
