Post by MOnarchsRule on Dec 12, 2006 2:13:11 GMT -5
By David Fleming
ESPN.com
Just as Adalius Thomas' black BMW 750 glides to a stop in front of a Kansas City outreach center, the onboard computer's female voice says, "You have arrived. Your destination is on the right." Without thinking, the gregarious Thomas says, "Thank you very much." It's the day before Thanksgiving, and Thomas is 10 minutes early for his task of handing out holiday meals and goodwill. Inside the shelter, he positions himself front and center by the stainless steel kitchen counter and begins dispensing birds. It's always awkward when a millionaire shows up to hand out food for an hour. But Thomas wins over those in line with his general warmth, his Yes, ma'ams, and his thunderous laugh when an older woman calls him Ray Lewis.
In anticipation of the crowd, the shelter hired a group of neighborhood teenage boys to assist people with their grocery bags. Even though they're standing just a few feet away, the kids constantly miss their cues for help. They're too busy debating the 6'2", 270-pound Thomas' role with the Monarchs. "He's a linebacker, or an end, I think," says the first. "Naw, man, he's a lineman," replies a kid in a buzz cut and a gray Tupac sweatshirt. "I think I saw him play safety or something," says another, causing the group to crack up. "Seriously."
Actually, they're all correct. Thomas, a sixth-round NFL pick out of Southern Mississippi in 2000, plays eight different defensive positions for the Monarchs -- everything from nose tackle to press corner -- often on consecutive downs. That's partly why, since Thomas signed on in 2004, he leads the team with 28 sacks and has averaged a hundred tackles a season , including a 12 tackle, 1 sack, 2 stfl, 1 FF showing in a week 1, 42-14 pasting of the Mustangs. He finished the year with a 13 tackle, 1 sack, 2 stfl performance in the regular season finale (W, 29-24) against LA. His display of Swiss Army knife versatility has rejuvenated the Monarchs defense, put Kansas City among the XFL elite and single-handedly transformed the term tweener from scout cussword to compliment. "I've been around football a long time," Jeremiah Trotter told the Kansas City Star earlier this season, "but he's one of those guys you look back at and say, Wow."
"Being a tweener isn't bad, it just means you're good at a lot of things," Thomas says while driving back from the shelter, where he snuck a donation check to the director without being noticed. "Instead of fighting the term, I embraced it. I like being a different kind of cat. It's like, Oh, you can do that one thing really well? Well, I can do this, this, this, this and this & and a little of this & and some of this. So now what do you say?"
As a senior center for Central Coosa High's hoops team, Thomas averaged 20 points per game, was named Alabama 4A Player of the Year and led his team to a state title. He was also an all-state linebacker, a standout tight end with 19 TDs and a high jumper on the track team with a personal best of 6'6". There are many athletes with his combination of size and speed, but it's the explosiveness and fluidity he developed under the rim and in the high-jump pit that make it seem as though Thomas was created in a Madden lab. "He's so smooth, it looks like he's gliding, not running," says South Carolina defensive coordinator Tyrone Nix, the coach who recruited Thomas to Southern Mississippi. "It's deceiving because it can look like he's loafing out there, until you realize that no one ever catches him."
Thomas was a two-time Conference USA Defensive Player of the Year, then ran a 4.56 40 at the combine. But he also had a reputation for taking it easy on some plays -- or looking like he was -- and for getting by on "just" ability. That scared off 30 other teams. But it made him a perfect fit for Kansas City. The Monarchs are one of the few XFL franchises that do not belong to a major scouting service. Owner/GM Sean Calliard abhors the kind of complacency and copycatting that comes from joining them. Instead, Calliard's staff does all its own homework, a laborious and expensive process that can require as many as eight pairs of eyes on a single prospect in order to form a consensus (see sidebar). "The whole scouting system is based on the one premise that players peak in college," says Daniel Bullocks, the Monarchs' leading tackler and an undrafted free agent in 2006. "But here they recognize that some people might need another year or two of coaching to mature and reach their potential."
So instead of complaining when the Monarchs shuffled him around, Thomas worked on mastering each spot. When they put him at tackle, he worked on syncing up his hands and feet to better shed blockers. When they switched him outside, he perfected more than a dozen pass-rush looks to confuse blockers. When they dropped him into coverage, he studied how to keep his weight balanced and his hips square while mirroring the first five yards of a route. And when they stuck him on special teams, Thomas learned to let, as he says, the "dirty dawg" in him come out every time down the field.
Rather than confuse him, playing several different positions has clarified things. Thomas has a blimp's-eye view of the scheme and a better understanding of the link among all assignments. Teammates call him The Coordinator in homage to his mastery of the defense. "To me, the guy's like Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks," says Monarchs defensive coordinator Dennis Thurman. "LT was a great pass-rusher, very fast, athletic and explosive. On the other side was Banks, who did all the dirty work, taking on blocks, stuffing the run, reading plays. Adalius is a combination of the two. For a long time, we just didn't have the guts as coaches to put a plan in motion that let him do it all."
That changed late last season. The Monarchs were 1-2 in their last 3 games following Coach Ted Johnson's departure. At around 2 a.m. on the Thursday before his first game as interim head coach, a glassy-eyed and goofy Eric Mangini was trying to come up with a scheme to liven up the defense. Channeling Buddy Ryan, the mastermind of the 1985 Bears' 46 D, Mangini scratched out the basic X's and O's of a scheme where -- for the entire game -- Thomas shifted from outside linebacker, his main responsibility, to defensive end to tackle to safety. He was a force. When Donnie Henderson came aboard, he saw what worked with AT and tweaked it - and the rest is history.
After that, what Thurman calls the Ravens' scheme became a regular part of the Monarchs' game plan. And Thomas began floating all over the field with spectacular results. Team owner Sean Calliard, like a proud papa, even asked for his own copy of Thomas' highlight reel.
Calliard keeps his copy of the DVD in his office at the Monarchs' practice facility, and from time to time, he'll pop it in. For football fanatics, it's better than porn. The tape begins with Thomas' playing nose tackle and ends with his walking out past the hash mark to line up as a corner on Darnell McDonald. Press coverage. XFL All-Pro receiver. By a 270-pound man. "Man, get your big, fat ass back inside before I embarrass you," McDonald yelled with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Watch this," the GM giggles. At the snap, Thomas jams McDonald at the line of scrimmage and drives him backward all the way to the Gatorade table. Calliard freezes the frame, and the room falls dark and silent for a few seconds. Then he adds: "In 10 years, when this kind of physically versatile player is a full-blown phenomenon, people will be wondering who started the whole trend. And you'll be able to point back to this moment and say, 'Hey, I know who it was.' "
And now, so do you.
