Behind the Mask
NFL veteran Michael Thomas impacts others with a life of service
By David Kiefer
MOMENTS AFTER A painful overtime loss in the 2012 Fiesta Bowl, Stanford football teammates Michael Thomas and Andrew Luck walked off the field together, arms draped around each other’s shoulders and with smiles on their faces.
Rival quarterbacks at Houston high schools, Thomas and Luck came to Stanford on the promise of better things for a downtrodden program, and left with the Cardinal as a national power.
“Two kids from Houston, coming out here balling, we wanted to come and create our own tradition and we were able to do that,” Thomas said. “We started something here, we built something here. That was our dream.”
Their conjoined journey would split from that point forward. Luck became the No. 1 pick in 2012 NFL Draft and Thomas, a safety, was not drafted at all.
If Thomas never played in the NFL, he undoubtedly would be driven to help others, as is his nature. The difference, of course, is the platform. Today, after nine years in the league, his impact is immense.
“Thank God a lot of people believed in me, and I believed in myself,” he said. “I kept working at it and got the opportunity. But, man, I never could have imagined …”
On Saturday, Thomas, of the Houston Texans, will attend a virtual ceremony to present the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, considered one of the league's most prestigious honors. The award recognizes an NFL player for outstanding community service, as well as excellence on the field.
Thomas joins fellow Stanford graduate Harrison Phillips, a defensive tackle for the Buffalo Bills, among nominees from all 32 teams.
Signed by his first Stanford coach, Jim Harbaugh, to the San Francisco 49ers’ practice squad where he spent nearly two full seasons, Thomas was acquired by the shorthanded Miami Dolphins for a 2013 Week 15 game against the New England Patriots. After four missed calls and five texts that morning, the Dolphins nearly moved on to someone else before Thomas woke up and accepted their offer.
Thrown into his first NFL action without any defensive practice snaps during the week, Thomas faced a driving Patriots team that trailed 24-20 late in the game. Tom Brady sought to pick on the rookie and threw toward Danny Amendola in the end zone with 27 seconds left. Thomas broke it up.
Facing fourth down on the Dolphins’ 14-yard line with seven seconds to go, Brady looked to the end zone again and threw to receiver Austin Collie. Thomas dropped off Amendola and leaped backward to intercept the pass and preserve a shocking victory.
Thomas was so new one of his teammates accidentally called him “Michael Jordan,” in a postgame interview. Thomas did not even know the route home from his home stadium.
A legend was born.
With the Dolphins, New York Giants, and now after his first season with the Texans, Thomas is a three-time team captain, has a Pro Bowl appearance and was named to the NFL’s 2010s all-decade team for special teams by Pro Football Focus.
“When things are at their most difficult, when things are at their most bleak, whether it’s a football game or life, guys like Michael Thomas are the ones who show up and change the outcome or change your view,” said David Shaw, Stanford’s Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football. “He is one of those guys that you’re fortunate to be around -- in the course of life, not just in football.”
Thomas remembers watching football on television and being riveted to commercials for “NFL Play 60,” where NFL players appeared at schools to promote healthy activities. Thomas fantasized what it would be like if an NFL player came to his school, and pledged that if he made the NFL himself, he would be one of those players. He has done so, not necessarily in the context of NFL Play 60, but in just about every other way imaginable.
Images spring to life of Thomas packing up trucks with supplies bound for his hometown of Houston after Hurricane Harvey, his tour of Haitian villages with the charity Food for the Hungry, of being presented with President’s Volunteer Service Award, in 2016 in Washington, D.C., along with a signed letter from President Obama.
WHY IS SERVICE important to Thomas?
“It started with the foundation from my parents,” he said, and to a boyhood in a Louisiana outpost.
Four Corners is not quite a town, it’s more of a rural village, not far from Bayou Teche, a swampy waterway lined with bottomland hardwoods and cypress-gum forests in south central Louisiana.
The Lockett family lived and toiled in Four Corners for generations, sharecropping on a cotton plantation. In 1984, the former Bernadette Lockett and her husband, Michael Thomas, returned to the area to start a law firm together.
Bernadette counseled abused women while litigating family, property, and probate law, and was president of the Black Business and Professional Women Group of St. Mary/Iberia Parish. She and Michael built a charter school in Four Corners, Carter G. Woodson Preparatory Christian Academy, for kids cast aside from other schools. Michael coached youth sports teams, providing a father figure to many who had none.
It was here in St. Mary Parish that Michael, their youngest child, learned from their example, and from a family legacy that includes his uncle, Raymond Lockett, who as a teacher, taught his students to question everything and to defend what they believed in. He fought for Black political representation and was hugely responsible for the desegregation of hotels, restaurants, food stores and other establishments in St. Mary Parish. He went on to become a college professor and was a pioneer in Black history education.
Thomas took all this in, even after his family moved to Houston for his oldest sister’s cancer treatments and after backlash to his mother’s run for a local judgeship -- because of prejudice toward a Black woman in that position -- hurt business to the point that the family firm folded.
His parents went from being lawyers to teachers, and his father ultimately became the sole financial provider for the family, though Bernadette, who passed away last April continued to be active as a counselor and writer, authoring a spiritually-guided parenting manual.
When Michael was young, his mother gave him a piece of advice that “helped me navigate through life,” he said.
“Son, you’re going to have to learn how to wear a mask,” she said.
At first, Michael didn’t understand, but she explained:
To be a young Black man in America, “you will feel angry, you’re going to feel slighted, you’re going to feel like you’ve been done wrong at times,” she said. “But you can’t always show that anger, you can’t always express exactly how you’re feeling.
“You’re going to have to smile a lot more. You’re going to have to present yourself in a manner that’s different than others. Especially with your darker complexion, many people are going to look at you and see you as a threat, regardless if you’re right or wrong or indifferent.
“I want you to come home every single night, so listen to me when I tell you this: You’re going to have to wear a mask.”
Sometimes it’s difficult. For instance, nothing could mask his anger at the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in Florida.
Thomas still was at Stanford at the time of the 2012 shooting, which ignited a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights. Thomas recalls having debates of his own in the locker room with some teammates.
It was the first racially-charged tragedy in his memory that captivated the nation. Thomas was incredulous not only at the verdict, but that others could defend it.
“It opened my eyes,” he said.
Unfortunately, more tragedies were to come.
ON CONSECUTIVE DAYS on July 5-6, 2016, Alton Sterling was shot and killed at close range by police officers in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile was killed by an officer during a traffic stop in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota.
Both shootings were caught on video and circulated on social media. These became the point of no return for Thomas.
“I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say anything or didn’t do anything, regardless of the consequences,” Thomas said.
Ultimately, Thomas and Miami Dolphins teammate Kenny Stills began to take a knee during the playing of the national anthem, joining in solidarity with 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and safety Eric Reid.
The lesson of the mask is to be willing, even when scared, to do the right thing.
“It’s knowing all the things that could possibly happen to you because of who you are and what you look like, but still having the courage and the willingness to step up to the challenge, be present, and try to make an impact,” he said.
Around this time, Thomas created the First Step program, helping the youth of Fort Pierce, Florida, communicate with law enforcement. It was the only time youth in that community had conversations with law enforcement that wasn’t related to doing something wrong or getting questioned.
Smiling and laughing are natural for Thomas, but his kneeling led to booing and verbal abuse from fans. It tested the essence of who he was and how he viewed others. Though it came from goodness and faith and family, staying positive and continuing to smile does not always come easily.
“It is a conscious effort, a conscious decision that I make every single day,” he said. “That’s just how I want to be remembered.”
For a glimpse of Thomas’ influence, here is a partial description of his community involvement in the past year:
Thomas created the unique design of the NFLPA's "END RACISM" pre-game warm-ups worn by the 1,696 players across the NFL. After the death of George Floyd, Thomas organized a Texans players-only video calling for social justice reform. He was featured in the NFL's "Say Their Stories" video to highlight the death of Castile.
He developed the "Victory Mondays" fundraiser that generated over $17,000 by auctioning off special game memorabilia and experiences to raise money for HBCU scholarship funds and the Dreambuilders Foundation. And he participated in the Texans' Breast Cancer Awareness Month efforts when he joined a Zoom with women who are battling breast cancer to offer words of encouragement.
Long established as a champion for youth and how they, too, can foster significant change, Thomas participated in the Boys & Girls Club of America Youth for Change Town Hall in October and was the spokesperson for the Houston Texans Stats Challenge program, using football to encourage kids to enjoy math while emphasizing the importance of academics.
His annual football camp, Camp Mike T. is unique in that it includes an academic component and financial literacy education. It was inspired by a transformative camp that Thomas attended as a high schooler, led by NFL running back LaDainian Tomlinson.
Oh yes, and he’s a vice president of the NFL Players Association, alongside former Stanford teammate and Phi Beta Sigma fraternity brother Richard Sherman.
“Someone so full of life, so giving and so energetic and so passionate about everything, that rubs off on you,” Shaw said. “It makes you better, makes you a better coach, makes you a better teammate.
“There’s such an easy opportunity for all of us to complain about difficult things, to point fingers. But that’s not who Mike is. Mike jumps into the middle of it and says, ‘How do we make it better? Who do I need to talk to? Do I talk to the mayor, the chief of police?’ Guys like him don’t always think about being a leader or being an example, that’s just who they are. That’s who he is all day.”
Thomas is married to Gloria, with a daughter, Genesis, and young son, Messiah. Another child is on the way. He has shifted from the idea that he could help bridge the law enforcement gap. There can be fatigue in trying to solve a problem that refuses to be solved, and that is one that will not change, Thomas says, unless the change comes from the top of the federal government and filters to the state and local levels.
In light of the Jan. 6 riots at the capitol, the work can seem overwhelming.
“You see what everybody else has been through,” Thomas said. “Dr. King and everybody else during the civil rights movement, they were putting their lives on the line and their families’ lives on the line, knowing that there probably won’t be change.”
The messages that Martin Luther King Jr. preached decades ago remain just as relevant.
“You just say, ‘You know what, I’m going to keep pushing and keep pushing and try to take it further,” Thomas said. “Because a lot of people who came before us were doing it and they didn’t have the same resources we did. They didn’t have the same backing and reach that we have. Yet, they were so impactful, and we owe it to them.
“If we don’t do it, who will?”