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Gretz: DT the Last Word
Feb. 11, 2005
I must admit that I’m a bit uncomfortable in writing this missive. Thanks to factors out of my control, I became part of a story this week. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s anything more boring than the media writing and talking about the rest of the media.
But in the week after last Saturday’s Hall of Fame voting session in Jacksonville, my name has been bandied about as part of the story on why Derrick Thomas did not make the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
I want to put a closing lid on this thing, at least for the next 11 months. Understand this: I would not change my presentation at all. It was an accurate and positive presentation of DT’s qualifications for the Hall.
What I want to do is give Chiefs fans and the readers of this web-site something they haven’t been able to get anywhere else.
What follows is my presentation to the Hall of Fame Board of Selectors. This is not a verbatim transcript; such does not exist as these presentations are not recorded. I spent several weeks working on these words, putting them into the form of a speech and then memorizing them to make my presentation smoother. With minor deletions here and there, this is what I told the voters.
Gentlemen, this is my ninth year as part of this group and the first time I’ve had the opportunity to present a player … I’m here to present Derrick Thomas for your consideration for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
I know you’ve received information from the Hall and from the Chiefs, so I won’t regurgitate all the basics. I’ll hit a few highlights:
 Over 11 seasons he had 126.5 sacks, ranking him among the top 10 sackers since the league made that stat official. He holds the league record for sacks in a game and has two of the three best sacks performances in the record book. His record seven sacks in a game came in his second season in the league, while his six-sack game came during his 10th season … This guy was a top pass rusher throughout his career, from start to finish. He was selected for nine Pro Bowls. He was involved in 65 takeaways, including causing 45 fumbles. I don’t think you can write the history of pro football in the 1990s without mentioning Derrick Thomas. No. 1, he was the league’s leading sacker in the decade. No. 2, he was the leader of one of the league’s most successful teams. No. 3, he was a player who could change the game on a single play. Pretty tough to do on the defensive side of the ball, but he did it many times with his speed and quickness off the edge. Few players had the burst that Thomas had. So many times it seemed like he was ahead of the snap, until you saw the replay and saw that he was not off-sides.
Derrick Thomas was a true impact player. I struggled with a definition of impact player until I talked with Jackie Slater, already a member of the Hall of Fame for his great career with the Rams. He defined for me impact player this way “as a player who affects the 11 guys on the other side of the line of scrimmage, and the 10 guys playing with him. That was Derrick Thomas. He was the dominant factor in any game he played.”
An impact player is someone that opponents must account for; that was Derrick Thomas. Jim Kelly told me: “It started on Wednesday with the scouting report … there wasn’t a single play where you didn’t have to identify where Derrick was. If you overlooked him, it was a disaster.”
Both Kelly and Marv Levy told me that besides Derrick Thomas the only defensive player they remember extensively game planning for was Lawrence Taylor.
Dan Reeves said without question stopping Derrick Thomas was the key to beating the Chiefs and that he game planned around him at Denver. “You had to help the tackle, bring the tight end over, or chip Derrick with a back. You always had to be aware of where he was.”
Jim Fassel said much the same, having game-planned against Thomas in both Denver and with the Raiders. “You just constantly worried about whether you could handle him. It was never a good week getting ready for Derrick.”
Bill Cowher took it a step further. He coached Thomas for three seasons as the Chiefs defensive coordinator before moving over to the Steelers. Cowher said: “Derrick forced you to alter what you were doing. It wasn’t just good enough to know where he was, you had to change what you normally did to make sure that he was blocked.”
An impact player elevates the play of his teammates, and that’s something Derrick Thomas did for 11 seasons.
I talked with Art Shell who had a very interesting view of Thomas’ career. Art of course is a Hall of Famer himself, but he coached against him with the Raiders, and then spent several seasons in Kansas City, watching him rush the passer for the Chiefs. Shell said: “The true test of a great player is how he forced the people around him to be better players. That was Derrick. There were things the Chiefs could do defensively in their coverages that they could not have attempted without DT.”
An impact player changes the game, and that was Derrick Thomas. John Elway told me he always felt Thomas “wasn’t satisfied with just a sack, he wanted a turnover, he wanted the fumble.” Elway noted that all the times he was sacked by Thomas he can’t remember that many devastating blows. “He was always grabbing with his left arm, while chopping at your arm with his right hand. He had more in mind than killing the quarterback, he wanted the ball.”
Jim Kelly said that sometimes he beat the quarterback to his drop, whether it was five or seven steps. And Kelly added, he was always swatting at the ball. “If I was a coach today, I would show my pass rushers a highlight tape of Derrick and teach them that style, going for the turnover.”
Art Shell added: “The sack with a turnover, that’s as devastating a play as there is in the game and that was Derrick. When he put his hand on the ground to rush the passer, he could change field position, possession or both.”
Kelly, Shell, Elway, Levy, Reeves and Slater all ranked Derrick Thomas on the same plateau as Lawrence Taylor. “DT was every bit the player LT was,” said Reeves. Jackie Slater said: “I think Derrick was just a continuation of LT.”
Mike Giddings, who has been around the NFL since 1968, ranks Derrick Thomas among the top four outside pass rushers he ever saw, along with Lawrence Taylor, Deacon Jones and Bruce Smith. “I feel strongly that Derrick Thomas deserves a place in Canton.”
Both Bobby Bell and Willie Lanier, two Hall of Fame linebackers from the Chiefs past, saw Thomas during his 11 seasons and both said they felt his play and performance was up to Hall of Fame standards and they would welcome him into the club.
Maybe the biggest impact Thomas made was as the foundation for the rebuilding of a once proud franchise. After losing the Christmas Day game to Miami in the playoffs in 1971, the Chiefs played 18 seasons and made the playoffs just once, in 1986. They reacted to that success by firing the head coach.
Lamar Hunt hired Peterson and Schottenheimer in 1989, and they built on Derrick Thomas. He was the fourth pick in the ‘89 draft and they won a lot of games, more than 100 in the 1990s, while never achieving the ultimate success of winning a Super Bowl. They did it with defense, led by Thomas. In his 11 seasons with the team, the Chiefs ranked on average: 9th in yards allowed, 9th in sacks, 7th in takeaways and 5th in points allowed. He was the catalyst behind those numbers.
In his 11 years, the Chiefs made the playoffs seven times, and had just one season with a losing record. In that time, the Chiefs defense ranked among the best in the NFL. Since his passing, the Chiefs have made the playoffs just once, had only one winning season and their defense has ranked among the league’s worst. It will be 5 years ago Tuesday, Derrick Thomas died. An argument can be made the Chiefs have never recovered, such was his impact.
I know there are questions in the mind of some of you about his overall abilities at linebacker. Was he just a pass rusher? I talked with all of his defensive coordinators and head coaches. That group of Marty Schottenheimer, Bill Cowher, Dave Adolph and Gunther Cunningham all praised his abilities and willingness to stop the run. Those who played against him like Reeves, Levy and Shell did not feel like he was a weak link in the run defense at all. He finished his career with over 728 tackles to go along with his sacks. In his 11 seasons, the Chiefs defense ranked on average in the top half of the league each year in fewest rushing yards allowed.
As for his pass coverage skills, Bill Cowher told me a great story. Cowher’s first defensive coordinator’s job was with the Chiefs. He said about every month or so he would come up with a page full of these exotic sub-defenses he wanted to implement, many of them had Thomas dropping into coverage. Cowher said he would take them into Marty Schottenheimer, who would look at them, and then hand them back shaking his head and asking “Bill, why do you want your best pass rusher running away from the quarterback?” As Cowher said, “I never had a very good answer for that.”
Derrick Thomas did what he was asked to do, and that was rush the passer and change the game.
And, he did that as well as anybody who has ever played in the NFL and deserves strong consideration for entry into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Thank you.
from KC Chiefs.com
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