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Hall of Fame QBs Recall Games Against Derrick Thomas
Feb. 1, 2008
Forty-six NFL quarterbacks have a Derrick Thomas story. That’s how many passers Thomas sacked during his 11-year career as a Chiefs linebacker.
Five of those sack victims are Hall of Famers. And all have distinct memories of Thomas, a finalist for the fourth time today for election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“Derrick was a difference-maker every time I was on the field,” said Steve Young of San Francisco, who faced Thomas in 1994 and 1997 in games at Arrowhead Stadium.
“When you start looking at the guys who completely changed what offenses were able to do and were real game-changers, he certainly was one of them,” said Troy Aikman of Dallas, who faced Thomas three times.
Of the 126.5 sacks Thomas recorded before he died in 2000 from injuries suffered in an automobile accident, 32 of them — or 25 percent — came against Hall of Famers.
Thomas sacked John Elway the most of any quarterback — 17 times. The other Hall of Fame victims were Jim Kelly, six; Young, four; Warren Moon three; and Aikman, two. (He also had four sacks of future Hall of Famer Brett Favre and one of Peyton Manning, which will eventually increase the percentage to 29 percent.)
“One of the guys I really respect who votes for the Hall of Fame told me how he votes,” Young said, “and he said, ‘if you wrote the history of the NFL, you couldn’t write it without them.’ I think you can make the argument Derrick would be one of those guys, for sure.”
Thomas, the NFL sack leader with 20 in 1990, holds the NFL single-game sack record of seven, set in 1990 against Seattle’s Dave Krieg, and also had six sacks in a game against Oakland in 1998.
But some of his performances in showdowns against five Hall of Famers may have been the most spectacular of all.
Buffalo’s Jim Kelly
It was one of the seminal moments of the 1990s when Thomas helped turn the Chiefs from a doormat to an NFL power. In a Monday night game on Oct. 7, 1991, at Arrowhead Stadium against the eventual AFC champion Buffalo Bills, Thomas sacked Kelly four times.
“Everybody always asks me the worst hit I took, the toughest guy to play against,” Kelly said, “and I always bring up Derrick Thomas because when we played in that game, I was dropping back to pass, and he was standing back there waiting for me.
“He was beating me to my drop. He was that quick. Every single time we played against the Kansas City Chiefs, we knew where Derrick Thomas was. He was a one-man wrecking machine. I think he’s a Hall of Famer.”
Kelly got some revenge against Thomas when the Bills beat the Chiefs in the 1993 AFC championship game in Buffalo.
“We knew he relied a lot on speed to come upfield,” Kelly said. “We knew he couldn’t get off the ball as quick as he did in Kansas City. We knew some of our power linemen would be able to block him. He played better at home, but he was one heck of a football player.”
Denver’s John Elway
Elway was sacked 516 times in his 16-year career, more than any other quarterback in NFL history. And Thomas left an indelible impression, especially in games at Arrowhead Stadium.
“He sacked me more often because he played me more than any of the others,” Elway said, referring to the other Hall of Fame quarterbacks. “Do you know how many he got in Kansas City and how many he got in Denver?”
Thomas sacked Elway 14 times at Arrowhead Stadium, where he fed off the crowd noise, and just three times at Mile High Stadium in Denver.
Thomas’ biggest day against Elway came in the regular-season finale of the 1992 season at Arrowhead. The winner of the game would head for the playoffs; the loser was out. Thomas sacked Elway three times, forced two fumbles, returned a fumble for a touchdown and hit Elway as he threw, causing an interception that was returned for a touchdown in the Chiefs’ 42-20 win.
“He was a guy who had great anticipation, was very smart, and when we went to Kansas City, he was great at using the crowd noise to his advantage,” Elway said.
Thomas also became the 15th player in NFL history to record 100 sacks when he dropped Elway twice in a 24-22 win in 1997 at Arrowhead.
“We played them so many times, and we had so many good games against each other,” Elway said, “it’s hard to remember them all.”
San Francisco’s Steve Young
Young faced the Chiefs in two memorable games. The first was in 1994 when San Francisco visited the Chiefs and quarterback Joe Montana, who had been acquired in a trade with the 49ers the year before.
Thomas sacked Young three times, once for a safety, in a 24-17 Chiefs victory.
“I remember leaving quite a bit of body tissue on that field,” Young says now. “There was nothing easy about that ballgame. That sack in the end zone was probably the difference in many ways. When I saw the score of that game recently, I thought it seemed like it was more of a lopsided game than that.”
The lopsided game came in 1997 when the Chiefs smashed San Francisco’s 11-game winning streak with a 44-9 victory. Thomas had one sack of Young in that game.
“Derrick was one of those guys who had tremendous anticipation (of the snap),” Young said. “I ran into the same problem with Rickey Jackson and Pat Swilling in New Orleans or earlier in my career with Lawrence Taylor in New York. You feel a little bit exposed. Derrick had tremendous speed, and he took advantage … and you had to roll away from him. He was faster than anybody who tried to block him.”
Young, like most quarterbacks, feared Thomas’ ability to strip the football while making the sack. Thomas forced 45 fumbles during his career and recovered 19, returning four for touchdowns.
“Most pass rushers get to the quarterback, and they’ve got a single focus,” Young said. “But with Derrick, it was, ‘Why not get the ball turned over and pick it up and run for a touchdown?’ He was never content with the sack, but had the athletic ability to be thinking about those kinds of things.”
Houston’s Warren Moon
Thomas may have sacked Moon three times in regular-season games, but perhaps their most memorable meeting came in a 1993 AFC second-round playoff game at the Astrodome when Thomas sacked Moon twice and caused one fumble.
“He was one of those guys you were told before you played him that week, you can’t give up on him until the whistle blows, because he’s relentless,” Moon said. “He just keeps coming. He was not only a great pass rusher himself, but he had a great impact on the rest of the defense as far as the pass rush was concerned.
“When you have to start accounting for him in your pass protections and making sure he’s blocked with a tight end or with a back, or you’re sliding that way, all that does is get you away from what you really want to do offensively. It gets you out of your philosophy, because you’re so worried about one guy, and it allows other guys to make plays like a Neil Smith on the other side, or a Dan Saleaumua on the inside.”
When Moon joined the Chiefs in 1999, he appreciated Thomas even more as a teammate.
“Even though he was a very gifted guy, Derrick worked harder than people thought he did.” Moon said. “ He studied more than people thought he did about opponents … whether it was an offensive tackle he was going to go against or running backs he would have to cover coming out of the backfield.
“He gets slighted because even though he was noted more for sacks, he only did what he was asked to do. If he had to drop into coverage, he would drop into coverage. If he had to play the run, which he played very well, especially away from him, he played the run. If he was asked to rush the quarterback, which he was a lot of the time, he rushed the quarterback. He did a lot of things, but the sacks and forced fumbles create more attention than he did.”
Moon also recognized Thomas’ efforts in the community, including the Third and Long Foundation that encouraged youngsters to read.
“For what he did on the field … where he ranks all time in sacks … and then what he did off the field. Derrick was a great humanitarian,” Moon said. “People don’t understand all the positive things he did with his foundation. Yes, he should be in the Hall of Fame.”
Dallas’ Troy Aikman
The Chiefs and Cowboys are in different conferences, but Thomas still managed to sack Aikman twice in three games.
“He was a guy a lot like Lawrence Taylor, who we faced a whole bunch early in my career,” Aikman said. “Whenever we would put our game plan in, the first thing we would have to address is how are we going to block this guy? All of our routes began with protections in a variety of ways to make sure he wasn’t disruptive and keeping us from throwing the football.
“Derrick, Lawrence Taylor, Reggie White are the three guys who come to mind from when I was playing that you would say, these guys can literally turn a game around by themselves, and that’s not easy to do for a defensive player.”
Not only did he sack Aikman twice — once in Dallas and once in Kansas City — Thomas also sacked him in the Pro Bowl, which was against the rules.
“He wasn’t supposed to be blitzing, so we didn’t have anybody accounting for him,” Aikman said. “It’s hard enough blocking him when you have two guys on him, but we didn’t have anybody on him that day.
“A lot of defensive players are hoping to get that car they give to the MVP, so there were a lot of things going on in that game that weren’t supposed to be happening.”
Aikman also took an interest in Thomas’ career because they both came out of the 1989 draft. Aikman was the first overall pick, Thomas the fourth.
“Deion Sanders and Barry Sanders were in that class,” Aikman said. “That was a good group. I’m proud of the draft class I was a part of, and Derrick Thomas was one of those. It made me feel good watching his career, even though it was cut a little bit short.”
from Kansas City.com
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