General
Duane Thomas, Enigmatic Running Back for the Cowboys, Dies at 77
He led Dallas to its first Super Bowl victory after engaging in a well-publicized contract dispute in which he called Coach Tom Landry “plastic” and refused to talk to reporters.
Duane Thomas, whose brief period of brilliance as a running back with the Dallas Cowboys in the early 1970s was overshadowed by a highly publicized contract dispute with the team that ended up shortening his career, died on Sunday at his home in Sedona, Ariz. He was 77.
His daughter Jamila Pamoja-Thomas said the cause was a pulmonary embolism.
The Cowboys had not yet won a Super Bowl or been nicknamed “America’s Team” when they drafted the fast, powerful and elusive Thomas from West Texas State University as the 23rd pick in the first round of the N.F.L. draft in 1970.
“I’m so excited, I can’t think,” Thomas, a Dallas native, told The Associated Press.
In his rookie season, he led the team with 803 rushing yards and caught a touchdown in the Cowboys’ 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl V. While his teammates were subdued after that loss, Thomas reacted with wisdom beyond his years.
“There is something noble in defeat,” he told reporters. “You cannot find victory unless you first understand defeat.”
In the summer before the 1971 season — two decades before a full-fledged free agency system in the N.F.L. gave players more leverage, and much higher salaries — Thomas threatened to retire if the Cowboys did not renegotiate his contract. At a news conference, he blistered the team’s management, calling Tom Landry, the stoic head coach, “so plastic, just not a man at all” and Tex Schramm, the general manager, “dishonest with me all along.”
The dispute escalated: The Cowboys traded Thomas during training camp that summer to the New England Patriots. Thomas and the team’s head coach, John Mazur, disagreed on Mazur’s insistence that Thomas line up in the traditional three-point stance before a play, rather than stand upright, as he had in Dallas.