Before the controversy over Colin Kaepernick, Duane Thomas always let the National Football League know where he stood.

Tuesday, Sept. 20, it was at John Ordean Stadium, with a steady rain dripping off the hat of the first starting running back to win a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys.

“I decide who I am,” said Thomas, who has lived in the Village with his wife, Tapzyana, a lymphologist, since 2007. “I’m not going to take on some assigned label.”

Sharing lessons from his four years in the NFL with the Sedona Red Rock High School and Junior High School football teams, Thomas, 69, opened up about a playing career cut short by behavior even more controversial than the San Francisco 49er quarterback’s refusal Sept. 1 to stand for a pregame national anthem.

“Patriotism is about being an active member,” Thomas said. “It’s not just standing out there, putting your hand over your heart.

“I would like to know what kind of influences [Kaepernick] might be around, but my goodness, you haven’t committed murder, so I’m not going to be so vicious in my response. Am I looking to find fault or for understanding?”

Characterizing himself as a quiet non-conformist, Thomas is currently updating his 1989 memoir documenting that philosophy, which manifested itself before a November 1972 game in which he did not stand for the national anthem and was photographed wandering the sidelines behind his teammates.

“That’s the least thing that was on my mind,” he said. “I was focused on the action on the field.”

After a Rookie of the Year season in 1970, Thomas was the NFL’s leading ground gainer the next season, rushing
for 95 yards and a touchdown in a 24-3 win over the Miami Dolphins in
Super Bowl VI.

“When we won, it eliminated the doubts,” Thomas said. “You rise above mediocrity, you’re at a stage you manage your doubts better.”

Such success, however, came amid a second season of silence to media, management and even Thomas’ teammates in Dallas.

“My first year, I was talking,” Thomas said. “I was on the field all season, money issues started coming into play, and before I know it, we’re going into another season. I was still involved with the team, trying to enhance the team as much as I could without disturbing the players so much, talking about contracts.”

Although Thomas said he never disliked his head coach, Tom Landry, he disagreed with him blaming his third-quarter fumble for Dallas’ loss his rookie season in Super Bowl V.

“Landry was not a motivator,” Thomas recalled. “He was very meticulous with detail, which was great with me, because that was more my background.”

A subsequent contract holdout prior to the 1971 season triggered a trade, subsequently voided by late NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, that would have sent Thomas to New England.

“I looked at the contract [as] a joint venture, meaning I have just as much to say about something as you, more or less,” Thomas said. “That’s your right, but it’s also mine. I keep my real personality out of the mix. There’s no hierarchy.”

But Landry and assistant coaches like Dan Reeves, who would go on to coach two teams to four Super Bowl appearances, did not have the openness to Thomas’ freedom of expression that later Cowboys runningbacks, like Emmitt Smith, would enjoy.

“There was some sign of flexibility,” Thomas said. “The thing is, the only way to get Tom to bend with you, you had to prove it worked on the field.

“I wasn’t concerned with records, or about who was going to start at quarterback. This is pro football. You could get a guard to give me the ball. I was only concerned with what was needed to win a championship.”

By the time Thomas was eventually traded, in 1972, to the San Diego Chargers, he had become known as much for his behavior off the field as on it.

“You’re always going to have someone trying to start a fight of some sort,” Thomas said. “It’s just ignorance.

“What I had to do is look, from a different perspective, at the human race — not blacks, not necessarily African-Americans [and] not designed to integrate using a color-coded system.”

But he never played for the Chargers, who had already suspended him 20 days for failure to report to the team, ultimately trading him to Washington.

“I know how to listen to individuals without getting into some squabble over how they have me set in their minds,” said Thomas, who, after two seasons with the Redskins, attempted comebacks with the Cowboys and Green Bay Packers before ending his career in 1979. “There is a fourth dimension of consciousness, beyond the field of all opposites, that supersedes all of that.

“You’re either on the black team or the white team. The point is that I’m on the team … and trying to improve the system. You still enjoy who you are.”