For $2,000 more, the Mercedes dealer tells Stan Thomas he can include a phone in the luxury car’s console.
Thomas asked aloud if that was worth it, then shook his head.
That sounded too steep, even for an automobile that carried a six-figure sticker price and probably cost more than the Imperial, Calif., house Thomas grew up in. Even for a brother who can afford it–St. Louis Rams linebacker Robert Thomas.
Thomas, interrupting a conversation twice in 10 minutes last week to answer calls from the car salesman, tossed his cell phone to a buddy and ordered him to call the man back with a new set of demands.
Include a satellite radio, Thomas instructed, but hold firm on the price. Arrange a pick-up date to drive it off the showroom floor.
Such are the daily worries of an NFL draft bust.
Fourteen years after setting a new standard for Bears draft mistakes when he was selected with the 22nd pick of the first round in 1991, Thomas lives in this tony suburb north of San Diego off investments made during a spotty five-year NFL career, does not work full time and dabbles in real estate.
“I’m having a good time, I have a lot of money, but when I look back to when I was drafted, now I know I was an idiot,” said Thomas, a 6-foot-5-inch, 302-pound offensive tackle with the Bears who started only seven games before being traded to the Atlanta Falcons after a DUI arrest in 1993. “It hurts to be called a bust, but there’s no other word. So I’ve moved on.”
His biggest decision one day last week was either choosing how to accessorize his brother’s new Mercedes or figuring out what he and his 7-year-old son, Cole, would eat for dinner.
A single parent who sued successfully for custody of his son, Thomas divides his time between advising and being Mr. Mom.
A typical day involves walking Cole to school a few blocks away and returning to handle the various business and personal needs of his brother, a starting linebacker for the Rams who was a first-round pick himself in 2002.
“Between Robert and my son, I’m a pretty busy guy,” said Thomas, 36.
He considers himself a happy guy, too, much different than he was in 1996 when he was in despair because a lower back injury forced him out of the league and he fell into alcohol-induced oblivion. He says he has only hazy memories of those dark days.
But at the lowest point of Thomas’ life after football, he took stock during a sober moment.
“I remember looking around and saying, `How did I end up in this position?'” Thomas said.
Knowing he could change nothing about the cluttered path his own career took, Thomas vowed to do everything possible to change his little brother’s. So every step of the way, from Imperial High School to UCLA to the Rams, Stan used his lost potential as the example Robert needed to realize his own.
They watched film together, worked out together, interviewed agents together.
Succeeded together.
“Robert gets all the glory for being so perfect, but he has to give credit to Stan because that’s where he learned it,” sister Candalyn Thomas said.
Failure can be a powerful teacher.
“After I was done, I thought I could turn all this negative energy, all this loneliness and pain, and put it into helping Robert,” Thomas said. “I told him about agents, I told him about crooks. He was groomed perfectly. He has no entourage, he’s not into all the outside stuff. He’s the opposite of who I was, but he’s who I wanted to be–a first-round draft pick who made it.”
Good, and bad, memories
Even closer than the waves of the Pacific Ocean that crash across the street from Thomas’ $1.3 million home, Bears mementos scattered throughout the house remind Thomas every day of what he was.
And what he wasn’t.
They produce as much pain as pride.
A game ball from 1991 awarded the former Bears offensive tackle from coach Mike Ditka for handling Minnesota Vikings defensive end Chris Doleman sits on a shelf above a 48-inch TV set.
In Thomas’ office, a framed Bears No. 60 jersey hangs next to a giant 5-foot-by-4-foot photo of Thomas and former Bears guard Tom Thayer protecting quarterback Jim Harbaugh against a Miami Dolphins pass rush on a snowy day at Soldier Field.
A snapshot of Thomas’ brief celebrity, such as a picture of him at the “Sally Jesse Raphael Show,” shares wall space next to one of him blocking Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor.
“See, I had some good times in Chicago,” Thomas said.
He offered two trophies he won in 1992-93 for community service as more proof, and continued reminiscing as he pulled out a binder full of Stan Thomas football cards.
Stepping out of the room that serves as a shrine to his football career, Thomas started sounding a little like Dickens, calling his days as a Chicago Bear the best of times and the worst of times.
“I deserved everything that happened to me,” Thomas said.
That is what Thomas tells his young son when he asks Daddy about the NFL. It only gets awkward when Cole’s buddies start getting specific.
“His friends come over and see the pictures and ask,” Thomas said. “And I don’t have much to talk about. [Then] every year the draft comes on, it’s a bad feeling for me. I had a lot of goals, a lot of plans on the football field that didn’t work out. That was hard to accept.”
It still is. When the Weather Channel reports the forecast in Chicago, Thomas flips channels. He does the same when he channel surfs and sees WGN-TV broadcasting the Cubs, White Sox, Bulls or any other obvious symbol of the city.
“I still avoid stuff like that if I can, because the pain is still there,” he said.
Without warning, sometimes emotion overcomes Thomas and he has as much chance to stop it as he did of slowing down Bruce Smith.
Near the end of a calmly composed two-hour interview, Thomas’ eyes began welling up with tears as he remembered the only reason he agreed to discuss his three-year ordeal with the Bears for the first time: He wanted to offer his gratitude and an apology.
“I want to thank the Chicago Bears organization, the McCaskeys (owners) and everybody who tried to help me succeed because without you, I would not be in the position I’m in today, able to stay home and raise my son,” Thomas began, his voice cracking.
“I also never had the chance to apologize to Mike Ditka for being an idiot on the sideline one day (in 1992 when Thomas yelled at Ditka on the sidelines during a game). I respect him as a man, a coach and a Hall of Famer. I was out of line, and it never should have happened.
“And I want to apologize to all the fans and media in Chicago for not living up to expectations. If I could do it all over again, I’d do it right. We all make mistakes.”
He paused to collect himself and wipe his eyes.
“I can’t believe this still makes me cry,” Thomas said.
Downward slide
Thomas started the first seven games of his NFL career at left tackle in place of the injured Jim Covert, looking as inconsistent as any rookie would playing the toughest position on the offensive line. He was the modern-day equivalent of Qasim Mitchell, drawing enough flags for false starts and holding calls to start a collection.
Still, the Bears believed Thomas had shown glimpses of the brilliance everyone expected of the first-rounder, such as the game he contained Doleman without a sack, until a high ankle sprain against Green Bay altered the course of Thomas’ season–and ultimately his career.
The injury made Thomas feel isolated and left the new millionaire with too much free time.
“Once I got hurt, coaches had no reason to talk to me [and] I was ignored, that’s just the NFL,” Thomas said. “I was like, why isn’t anybody talking to me? I also felt the pressure of being a first-rounder that wasn’t playing. Nobody was there to keep me focused, so I didn’t focus.”
He began living large, liberally dipping into his $1.2 million signing bonus and hiring a personal assistant to drive him around Chicago. Thomas said he would stay out drinking until midnight and fell prey to the temptations of “the mooches and women.”
“The nightlife makes you feel like a king,” he said. “I wasn’t the same person and I learned the hard way. I had the opportunity of my life and I blew it.”
He developed bad habits and, worse, a reputation. Former teammate Chris Zorich, whose locker was across from Thomas’, recalled seeing the entourage around Thomas expanding.
“There’d be seven people waiting for him after games,” Zorich said. “Back then, we called it `big-timing’ it. I think he got complacent.”
Added former teammate Keith Van Horne: “He walked around like he was `The Guy.'”
Thomas returned from the sprained ankle after missing one game but was never the same player. He blamed a loss of confidence created, in part, by the coaching style of Ditka and his staff. As an All-American at the University of Texas, Thomas’ idea of tough love was a bad date.
“When I made a mistake my rookie year, I wasn’t used to being yelled at the way Ditka and other coaches yelled at me and I wasn’t used to being told I was no good,” Thomas said. “I hate to say I couldn’t handle the pressure, but it got to me. So I started being around people who would praise me, be impressed that I was Stan Thomas, Chicago Bear.”
It only would get harder for Thomas to gain favor within the organization during the off-season. In February 1992 back home in San Diego, Thomas was shot in the head while driving away from a nightclub at 1:30 a.m. and required surgery to remove bullet fragments in his skull.
Bears Chairman Michael McCaskey, who pushed the Bears to draft Thomas over Ditka’s objections, called Thomas at the hospital. So did Ditka. It wasn’t what they said that Thomas remembered, but how they said it.
“I knew from their voices that things were going to be different when I got back,” Thomas said.
They were. The Bears drafted offensive tackle Troy Auzenne in the second round of the ’92 draft and put Thomas on notice. When he returned for mini-camp, teammates tired of Thomas’ immaturity made him feel even worse.
“Once we found out he was OK, we were like, `Dude, what the [heck] were you doing putting yourself in that situation?'” Zorich said.
Thomas knew the answer, and also knew nobody in the locker room would understand. It took him nearly 14 years before he did.
“I wasn’t the same Stan Thomas, the bad ass who pancaked eight people a game at Texas and who spent two hours in the weight room every day,” Thomas said. “I wasn’t that person because I couldn’t overcome that lack of confidence I had as a rookie. I could feel all the pressure on me in that facility. So I turned to people outside of football.”
Party guy
Those people let Thomas down as much as he disappointed the Bears. He estimates he lost $500,000 on a failed investment in an insurance company that turned out to be a scam. A naive kid from a small town who already had accumulated $100,000 in credit-card debt before being drafted, he was an easy mark.
With finances and football creating unbearable anxiety, Thomas turned again to the bottle during his second season. The partying continued, and any progress on the field stopped. Zorich recalled how badly defensive linemen at training camp wanted a chance to prove themselves against a first-round draft pick who was drinking himself out of the league.
“All the people in the organization were fed up with me, and I don’t blame them,” Thomas said.
He played in only 11 games as a reserve in ’92, Ditka’s last season, and wondered if a new coaching staff might change his career. It didn’t.
In July ’93, Thomas was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol after leaving Walter Payton’s restaurant in Schaumburg. Thomas was so intoxicated that he had forgotten he had hired a driver for the night, so he tried driving himself home.
The Bears ordered him to spend a week in alcohol rehabilitation and demoted him to third string when training camp started before trading him and forever labeling the experiment a flop.
“The biggest difference between a first-rounder and a seventh-rounder is you get a lot more chances,” Thomas said. “[Mine] had run out.”
His bad luck had not.
Atlanta waived Thomas after he refused to restructure his contract, but he eventually landed as a backup in Houston for two seasons. With the Oilers, Thomas had his Mercedes torched after he was carjacked at gunpoint outside a Houston grocery store.
Then, his parents, Stan Thomas Sr. and Liz, received four-year prison sentences for tax fraud and Thomas had to pay the IRS $300,000 in restitution.
Thomas’ latest controversy came last June when San Diego County police arrested and jailed him after a female alleged he had sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious. The district attorney eventually decided against filing charges.
“I was falsely accused and am not at liberty to discuss it any more than that,” Thomas said.
All the brushes with the law have made Thomas wary.
Rather than share his exact address before an interview last week, for example, he instructed a visitor to exit Interstate 5, pull into a gas station, wait for a black Escalade to pull up and follow the vehicle driven by a buddy to the house inside a gated community.
“I still feel like a target,” Thomas said. “You have to be careful.”
Candalyn Thomas says at least two literary agents have approached the family about writing a book about their travails. Stan Thomas would say the best chapter only has begun to be written.
“It was never my intention to take all the money I can, go out and party and ruin my career, but that’s what happened,” Thomas said. “I let the organization down, I let my teammates down, I let the fans down and I’m sorry.
“But I’m different. I’m 36 years old. I just hope there’s even one first-round pick out there in the draft [Saturday] who can learn from my mistakes, and handle the pressure better than I did.”
