His Head Is Finally On Straight

Lord knows, Thurman Thomas has lost his head before. Many times, in fact. Many times this week.

He owns a National Football League most valuable player trophy, but he says he gets no respect.

He lost last year’s Super Bowl, but says he should have won the most valuable player trophy there, too.

He gets to play in Super Bowls because he gets to play alongside Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith and Cornelius Bennett, but claims to be the Michael Jordan of the Buffalo Bills and refused to show for Wednesday’s media interview session after one of his coaches had the temerity to suggest that Kelly just might be the Michael Jordan of the Buffalo Bills, which, of course, begs the question: Who’s the Bill Cartwright of the Buffalo Bills?

So that was a new one Thomas pulled during the opening minutes of Super Bowl XXVI Sunday, when Buffalo had to open Super Bowl XXVI without Thomas, who hadn’t lost his head this time, only his helmet.

Let’s see now: Ball is kicked to Washington to start the game. Commercial break. Washington runs three plays, gains six yards, punts the ball. Commercial break. Buffalo offense steps onto the field to run its first play from scrimmage. And then its second play.

And Thomas is running a crazed fire drill behind the Buffalo bench, still searching for his helmet.

“That was, ah, unique,” Bills wide receiver James Lofton observed.

“Somebody moved it,” Thomas insisted. “If our defense is on the field, I always take my helmet off and leave it on the other side of the bench. Then, when I’m ready to go in, I know where it is. But somebody moved it.”

A likely story. An unlikely introduction to the big story. Buffalo stymies Washington with an emotional defensive stand, Buffalo gets great field position, Buffalo can’t believe its luck . . . and Buffalo has to start the most important game of this football season with Kenneth Davis at tailback.

Davis, who might be the Will Perdue of the Buffalo Bills, rushed for 783 fewer yards than Thomas in 1991.

But there he is in the record books, forever entrenched: Kenneth Davis, Super Bowl starter, official ball carrier on the Bills’ first play from scrimmage.

Needless to say, Bills’ Coach Marv Levy was speechless. Or, as Levy later worded it, “disconcerted.” Disconcerted that “our equipment man couldn’t find his helmet. But, then, I get disconcerted 375 times a game.”

Thomas was disconcerted, too, although he probably didn’t realize it.

“I was very upset,” Thomas said. “Especially because the first two plays were running plays. When we run the ball, I want to be in there. Instead, everybody was running around and didn’t know where anything was.”

That, on a thumbnail, was the essence of Buffalo’s second Super Bowl experience.

For four quarters, everybody was running around.

Nobody knew where anything was.

Last January, Buffalo lost a Super Bowl by a point after a missed field goal by Scott Norwood. This January, Norwood was a perfect one-for-one on field goals and he could have gone five-for-five without it making an ounce of difference. From 20-19 to 37-24 in 12 months--although it could have been 51-24, easily, and actually was 37-10 before Kelly overwhelmed Washington’s second-string defense for a pair of absolutely worthless touchdown passes in the final six minutes.

What was that about older and wiser and more determined?

Did somebody say Denver Broncos?

Why, yes, our man Thomas did.

“We have the best record in pro football the last two years, and we’re 0-2 in Super Bowls,” Thomas noted. “We’ve got the talent to win the Super Bowl, but we’ve fallen into the same class as the Denver Broncos and the Minnesota Vikings.

“We’re great in the regular season, we’re great in the playoffs, but once we’re in the big game, we don’t play as well as we should.”

In truth, the Bills are only halfway to Elway, halfway to Valhalla. The Broncos and the Vikings are both a big 0-4 in Super Sundays, leaving the precocious Bills at least two years away. But, you have to like their potential. Unless the Raiders or the Chiefs find a quarterback, Buffalo will most likely show up next year at the Rose Bowl, where the Bills can go for the Big Three against Jimmy Johnson’s Dallas Cowboys.

And the way Buffalo handles NFC East opponents in these annual foregone conclusions, Rich Kotite’s Philadelphia Eagles and Joe Bugel’s Phoenix Cardinals can hardly wait.

Now that Buffalo has dropped Denver’s baton, which was dropped previously by Cincinnati, New England and Miami, the AFC is sitting winless in its last eight Super Bowls and 1-10 since the dawn of the 1980s. The last AFC team to win it all: the Raiders, in early 1984. The last AFC team to win it all before that: the Raiders, in early 1981.

If you need a reason why Al Davis is finally headed for the Hall of Fame, there it is.

By the time Thomas could locate his helmet--and, yes, they do make them in his size--Kelly was dropping back for his first pass of the game and getting dropped, for a 10-yard loss, by Washington defensive tackle James Geathers. To miss two plays isn’t much, not in the grand scheme, but without Thomas, Buffalo botched a chance to strike first and shift the blitzing Redskins to a backpedal and after that, the Bills’ grand scheme quickly unraveled.

Soon, Washington would be up, 17-0, and Thomas, the AFC’s leading rusher with 1,407 yards in 1991, would be a non-factor. After gaining 135 yards in 15 carries in Super XXV, Thomas netted just 13 yards in 10 carries. Davis, of all people, outgained him, 17 yards to 13. So did Kelly, who scrambled three times for 16 yards.

“I think they should have used me more,” claimed Thomas, going out with gums ablaze. “I don’t know what they were thinking. We can’t go away from our running game. It’s what got us here.”

Thomas thought about it a bit and eventually answered his own question.

“It’s one of those things--we fell behind 17 points and they had to start throwing the ball,” he said. “But, for some reason, they didn’t throw the ball to me.

“That doesn’t upset me, but I was scratching my head. All year long, I was involved in the passing game and now this. But it’s not my decision. I don’t know what the coaches are thinking.”

Buffalo, of course, lost the ultimate game, but what was that compared to Thomas’ sacrifice? Thomas lost everything he had--in other words, the one chance he saw for some sadly overdue pub.

“I want respect,” he said. “This team wants respect. In order to get respect, we have to win games like this.”

Helmets come and helmets go, but Thomas will never lose sight of that fact.