Thomas Comes Back Well After Injury

Blair Thomas had to laugh. There he was, standing on a riser in the belly of Giants Stadium Saturday, answering questions about Penn State’s 17-0 victory over Rutgers, when a writer asked if the hip injury he suffered during the game was serious. Thomas wrinkled his face into a smile of such proportions that his eyes were forced shut, as if words alone could not begin to bridge the gulf between life’s experience and the questioner’s ignorance. This was his private joke.

It was the first weekend of October, and almost two years had passed since those four months when life kept hitting Thomas with brickbats. His father died of stomach cancer in late November and his brother, only 35 years old, died of a heart attack in February. In between, Thomas’ right knee ripped apart during a docile, non-contact drill in preparation for the Citrus Bowl.

“They say bad things happen in threes,” he said. “Well, they did.”

Twice through tragedy, once through the damnable rehabilitation of a leg that represented his future.

“No,” Thomas said, “it’s not serious.”

It is a brisk and brilliant October morning in Happy Valley when Thomas tools into the parking lot of the Penn State Recreation Building in his modest sports car. It is a fine day for any one of many reasons, the crystalline sky and turning leaves being only two of them. For Thomas, it is so because, at 22, he has decided most days are not so bad at all.

“He’s a rare guy,” said teammate Leroy Thompson, a junior fullback. “Coach (Joe) Paterno is always saying there’s not a more well-liked guy on this team, and he’s telling the truth. You learn from him -- how to play, how to think.”

Paterno, who coached Curt Warner, Franco Harris, John Cappelletti, Lydell Mitchell and D.J. Dozier, said, “Blair is the best all-around back we’ve had here. Right now, today. And he’s going to be the best, if he stays healthy.”

With 527 yards on 98 carries in five games (Penn State is 4-1), Thomas is playing much like he was expected to after he rushed for a city-record 3,941 yards in three years at Frankford High School in Philadelphia. Or after he averaged 8.4 yards as a sophomore at Penn State, breaking Lenny Moore’s 33-year-old record. Or after he gained 1,414 yards in 1987, third highest in Penn State history, including a 214 against Notre Dame in the final game.

“I was aware of him ... and I only scout seniors,” New York Giants General Manager George Young said. “He was a good-looking kid that year.” Note the past tense.

On Dec. 9, 1987, Penn State was going through a light workout on the artificial turf of its indoor practice facility when Thomas was injured, just 18 days after the game that made him the leading candidate for the 1988 Heisman Trophy (nobody knew Barry Sanders from Colonel Sanders back then). “We were just weaving in and out of each other,” Thomas said. “I went to plant and go to my left and my knee just gave out. It made a sound like I was cracking my knuckles.”

Willie Thomas, a defensive back and Thomas’ roommate, recalled: “He just went down. We all heard this little snap. And he stayed down. It was scary. We all stood there, I was saying to myself, ‘Get up, just get up.”’

The funny thing was, he got up and walked off the field. “I figured I could play in the Citrus Bowl that year,” he said. No chance. He had torn his anterior cruciate ligament, and major surgery was performed Jan. 11, 1988. Thomas was left staring at arduous rehabilitation and a daunting decision: Since recovery would cause him to miss his senior year, should he make himself eligible for the 1988 NFL draft, or return for his fifth year in 1989?

His mother, Barbara, who raised five children in a well-kept row house in a tough center city neighborhood, asked him to stay in school. He is the baby, and she desperately wished for him to get a degree. “Besides,” he said, “I probably would have been picked in the late rounds of the draft. I had nothing to show them that I was back from the injury.”

So he set to the business of rehabilitation. First it was dead-lifting small sandbags, then swimming and eventually cycling around the hilly countryside that envelops the Penn State campus. Improvement came in tiny increments, especially during last fall as he watched his teammates endure their first losing season in 50 years. But one day he was running on a treadmill and caught a glimpse of progress. “There was a lot of pain in the beginning and the first time I got on it, I could see that I was running with a limp,” he said. “Then I noticed it was starting to go away, gradually. Very encouraging.”

And it got better. Last spring the 5-11, 190-pound Thomas matched his personal best of 4.4 seconds in the 40-yard dash. “I see no difference in him at all,” said Willie Thomas.

Blair Thomas assumed his tailback position and started talking about breaking records and playing pro football. But much hinges on the rest of the fall.

“He’s got to put the skins on the wall,” Young said. “He doesn’t have to do anything abnormal, just show that he’s close to the same person he was ... I hear it’s been a little hard to judge.”