A Heady Experience : One Safe Bet Sunday Is That Thomas Won’t Misplace His Helmet Again

Thurman Thomas can’t forget his football helmet.

Not now, not tomorrow, not in Sunday’s Super Bowl, not at Tuesday’s media feed-and-frenzy at Dodger Stadium, not as long as video exists of Thomas missing the first two plays of Super Bowl XXVI while frantically searching the sidelines for his misplaced headgear.

“No matter how big a game I play, it’s always brought up,” Thomas said. “You know that. I know that. Everybody else knows that.

“If we win Sunday, I know what’s going to be at the top of the sports page. ‘Buffalo Bills Win Super Bowl--Thurman Finds His Helmet.’ That’s going to be the headline, no matter what happens. I’m sure you’ve already got that quote ready and everything.”

Just to make sure they were covered, though, reporters peppered Thomas with questions about the most famous case of hide-and-seek in NFL history--the acting metaphor for the Bills being clueless in their 37-24 loss to the Washington Redskins last January.

Will you hold onto it during the national anthem this time, Thurman?

“Nah,” Thomas says, leaning back in a chair above the third-base dugout. “I’ll put it in the same spot I always put it.”

You put it in the same spot every game?

“Yeah. On the bench.”

And somebody picked it up and moved it?

“You know what I do? If Washington is going north, say, I put it down here (Thomas gestures south). If they punt down here, if they kick the ball down here, my helmet will be down here. That’s what I did. But somebody put it at the other end.”

Is this something you’ve done before?

“I’ve done this since 1988. (But) that was the first time it ever happened to me.”

Do you think a trainer or a player did it?

“I have no idea who it was.”

A moment’s pause, for comedic effect.

“I say it was Kenny Davis.”

Davis is the reserve running back who got to start a Super Bowl in place of Thomas, the temporarily hatless horseman. You could look it up. In the Bills’ 1992 media guide, Davis is noted this way: “Will probably be remembered forever as the answer to the trivia question, ‘Who started for Thurman Thomas in S.B. XXVI when he could not locate his helmet?’ ”

In many ways, it was a landmark moment for Thomas, the Bills and the Super Bowl.

Eleven players have rushed for more than 100 yards in a Super Bowl.

Only one player lost his helmet.

Eight players have passed for more than 300 yards in a Super Bowl.

Only one player lost his helmet.

Jim O’Brien is the only man to win a Super Bowl with a field goal in the waning seconds, but, by comparison, his was a simple feat. Kick a ball 32 yards, straight, piece of cake.

But losing your football helmet at a Super Bowl? Very hard to do--a football helmet being rather large, shiny and, in the case of the Buffalo Bills, painted a fire-engine red.

Yet, difficult to believe as it might be, Thomas suggests that the ensuing tumult over his Absent-Minded Professor act has been overplayed.

“You look at it and people act like those two plays were the two plays that lost us the Super Bowl,” Thomas says. “We had 60 more minutes to play. If anybody thinks that cost us the Super Bowl. . . . “

No, but it helped set the tone, as they say.

Thomas spent most of that Super Bowl week griping about not getting the most-valuable-player trophy in Super Bowl XXV; griping about not getting his due as an All-Galactic running back; griping about a Buffalo assistant coach’s assertion that quarterback Jim Kelly was “the Michael Jordan of the Buffalo Bills” and, by implication, that meant Thomas had to settle for Scottie Pippen or Horace Grant.

Then, Thomas went out and clanked a ton of bricks.

His statistics: 10 carries for 13 yards, four receptions for 27 yards, one lost helmet, a second lost Super Bowl and a nationally televised refresher course in how hot air fills a football but does nothing to move one past the goal line.

Thomas was asked what he learned from his second Ultimate Loss in as many Ultimate Games.

“I learned that we lost two,” he replied. “That’s about it.

“I’m always just Thurman Thomas. I’m always the outspoken person. I’m always going to be vocal about certain points. I’m always the same person.”

Still, at perhaps the behest of Marv Levy, he did turn down the volume a notch Tuesday, softening the attack by aiming playfully at old friends in high places.

He jabbed Levy, who made the claim that Buffalo, not Dallas, is truly “America’s Team.”

“I don’t agree with Marv too many times,” Thomas said, laughing. “Maybe Marv is getting caught up with the hype instead of the players.”

He jabbed Cowboy Coach Jimmy Johnson, who recruited Thomas out of high school in 1983, when Johnson was coaching at Oklahoma State.

“The first time we met, I already knew I was going to Oklahoma State,” Thomas said. “But my mom had a meeting with him and one thing she asked him was, ‘Jimmy Johnson, are you going to be here the entire four years that Thurman’s going to play ball?’ And Jimmy said yes.

“Two weeks later, he took his butt down to Miami.”

Thomas insists there are no hard feelings: “He was in position to go to a bigger program. If it was me, I’d probably do the same thing.” But, he concedes, a victory Sunday “could be very well a great pay back.”

As for erasing the memory of the forgotten football helmet, Thomas has all but abandoned hope.

“There’s nothing, I think, I can do to change it now,” Thomas says. “It’s always going to be written about, it’s always going to be talked about.

“It’s going to be brought up, whether it’s my last year, my 12th year, if I someday make it to the Hall of Fame.”

Imagining that far-off moment, Thomas chose to grin, rather than fear it.

“If you make the Hall of Fame, I don’t know if they put your jersey in there, or your cleats or whatever,” he said.

“But I’m pretty sure, if I’m in there, I’m going to have a helmet there.”