Justin Time
NOVEMBER 11, 1990; ARROWHEAD STADIUM – Derrick Thomas is on a mission. It’s Veterans Day and the fans at Arrowhead Stadium are helping Thomas, the brilliant linebacker from Alabama, pay tribute to his father, a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress pilot killed in action in Vietnam 18 years earlier when his son was just five.
Already a star in only his second season, Thomas has dedicated his performance to his late father. As a squadron of military jets fly overhead pre-game in tribute to the former Air Force captain, he thinks about the man he missed so much. In the final moments before kick-off, the Pro Bowl outside linebacker is handed a yellow military headband by a retired pilot who flew many missions with Robert Thomas.
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Dave Krieg, who enjoyed a 19-year career in the NFL, has never witnessed anything like the scene before kick-off on this wet November afternoon in Kansas City: “Man, the crowd was loud, so loud. Then the planes flew over and Derrick was fired up. He was real wild. The crowd was real wild.”
They only get wilder as Thomas produces one of the greatest individual performances in NFL history, in the process setting a record that still stands today. He spends the entire game in the Seahawks backfield, bringing down Krieg seven times. Yet the day is remembered for the sack he misses as the Seattle passer somehow shrugs Thomas off and fires a 25-yard touchdown to Paul Skansi with four seconds left to give the Seahawks a 17-16 win. “I took a beating from Derrick all day. He was phenomenal. Every time I went back to pass, he was around me. But somehow, on that last play, I felt him coming and just turned my hip a little and got away from him. It just bought me enough time to make the throw.”
Afterwards, Thomas sits by his locker and pulls the now-sweat-stained cloth given to him before the game from his head. He tells the media of the gift’s “massive significance” and wonders what might have been on that fateful play. “I thought I had him. He just stumbled back and caught his balance and he threw the pass. The sack I didn’t get will be the one I always remember.”
Thomas and Krieg would reminisce years later on a local golf course when the Chiefs signed the signal-caller as a free agent. “Yeah, he brought it up quite a bit,” Krieg says. “But I always had the last laugh. The one that got away. It always bothered him.”
Watching the drama unfold on television in Georgia on that day was high-school head coach Steve Pennington. He tells Gridiron: “Thomas was a special one. I remember he just kept coming that day. They couldn’t stop him. I never thought you’d see the like of him again, especially not in the same uniform.”
And yet, almost 25 years since that day, the Kansas City Chiefs have another one. Where once there was Derrick Thomas, now there is Justin Houston.
Houston was born in Statesboro, Georgia, the largest city in Bulloch County. It’s had its share of professional athletes, including three apiece in the MLB and NFL. But it’s never had anyone like Houston. Not even the legendary blues musician Blind Willie McTell, until now the city’s most famous son, can boast a back catalogue like number 50. And yet he’s perhaps the quietest superstar in football. Type his name into Google and you won’t find much about his upbringing or high-school career. There’s not even detail on his devil, the failed marijuana test at the NFL Scouting Combine that saw him fall to the third round of the 2011 draft. And that’s just the way he likes it.
Pennington, who coached Houston at Statesboro High, reveals: “He’s just a low-key guy. Always has been. I mean he knew how to have a good time, very jovial, but he also knew when it was time to be serious. He could make you laugh but he could also get on you. He was a mature kid who wouldn’t stand for people who didn’t take the game seriously. He is team-first, all the way.”
“It’s definitely a team effort. It’s never just one person,” the All-Pro linebacker tells Gridiron. “Everybody has to do their jobs from the corners up to the defensive line. It’s a total team effort.”
Perhaps the humility is cause and effect of a childhood in which he was always doubted. Perhaps the inability of those around him to see his talent is what pushed him on. And, much like Thomas before him, perhaps the lack of a father figure was pivotal. “My dad wasn’t there,” Houston told students in a talk at Ivy Prep Gwinnett earlier this year. “I didn’t have a male role model to look up to and so my whole life people told me what I can and can’t do. I had teachers who told me that I wasn’t going to make it at the University of Georgia. They didn’t think I was smart enough. But I wasn’t letting anyone kill my dream.”
For Thomas, the death of his father saw him go off the rails, saved only by a juvenile detention centre. For Houston, his father’s absence meant one thing: athletics. He began playing recreational league football for exercise and fun and his coaches believed he’d be a great offensive player. Until he met Pennington.
“He’d flirted a little bit with defense but, when I saw the size of his hands, I knew he had to play there full-time,” the head coach says. “I mean these hands were like shovels and I remember thinking to myself that if he grew into them then he’d be pretty special.” Houston saw playing time as a freshman – rare at Statesboro – as the Blue Devils went to the state championship in part because of the impact of their young defensive end. “I mean he was a pretty pivotal tool in helping us get there,” adds Pennington. “It was very apparent to me and the rest of my staff that he possessed the tools you could win with.”
And win they did. As a junior Houston exploded, taking Statesboro to the state semi-finals, his confidence and understanding of the game blossoming as he played with what his coach terms ‘reckless abandon’. As a senior, he led them to their fifth state championship, juggling basketball and football commitments as well as embarking upon a heavy recruitment schedule when major colleges came calling.
“To be honest, there was quite a lot of interest when he was a junior,” Pennington says. “Recruiters came to see some of our seniors but Justin was the one standing out. It was like a three-ring circus. He was an icon. I mean you guys need to understand that this whole recruiting process has become a darned public relations gimmick. What recruiting doesn’t measure, and what the professional combines don’t measure, is what’s inside a person’s heart. And it doesn’t measure their desire and willingness to be the best they can be. And that was Justin. He really benefited from having a class above him that was going to further their careers but, when those big schools arrived, they could see just how special he was externally and internally and just how hard he worked.”
Houston stayed in state by picking Georgia over Florida and, according to Pennington, stayed in shape ahead of his first season in Athens the only way he knew how. “His work ethic was legendary. I mean I see all these kids these days and the majority of them suffer from senior-itis. They think they’ve made it because they have a scholarship and it jumps on people that final semester. Not with Justin. He didn’t miss a single workout his senior year. Not one. In fact, he worked harder preparing for college than he did during the season. He was in the greatest physical, mental and emotional state he could be. It was pure. He didn’t have to do it, but it was intrinsic. It was all about self-motivation and I firmly believe that he’s the way he is now because of what he did in that last few months here with us. That’s just Justin, always working.”
Nobody quite remembers how the story goes. But those that were there say that it started quietly with everybody in the weight room, gathered around the junior. Houston stood in front of 420lbs of iron – more than the weight of a fully-grown adult lion and more than anyone had ever power cleaned in the history of Bulldog football – and lifted it to his shoulders. He took a deep breath, bent forwards and gripped the bar with those massive hands before flinging it upwards in an explosion of raw strength. His teammates swarmed him. His strength coach Dave Van Halanger was in awe: “Did that just happen?” he would ask. And yet no one was really surprised. The quiet kid with the brilliant smile just kept working.
That would be Houston’s final season in Athens, with the lure of the NFL too great. Yet even the stories of his Herculean heroics were not convincing everybody. Houston’s stock was falling in front offices and scouting sessions around the league. Despite a 10-sack junior campaign, his unfamiliarity with a new defense that saw him dropping into coverage more impacted his value. Jon Gruden called him “the most disappointing player I studied”. Mike Mayock declared himself “not a Justin Houston guy, just on work ethic and hustle” – which annoyed Pennington. “I don’t know what they were seeing,” he said. “I mean he played differently in that 34 front than before because he was thinking more and attacking less. But criticising a guy because of work ethic and hustle? That’s a new one on me.”
The returning doubt at such a crucial time in his life got to Houston. He could argue his case when it came to game film, describe each play and his role within it to the doubters. But what a man with falling stock couldn’t do around draft time was give his detractors more ammunition.
“In all honesty, Simon…”. There’s a long pause on the line as Steve Pennington composes his thoughts. “In all honesty, not only was I surprised but I was bitterly disappointed in that choice.”
The decision was Houston failing a drugs test for marijuana at the Combine. It was a bolt from the blue for all who knew him. He calls it a “bad decision” but rarely discusses further. At a Community Caucus in Georgia in the summer, he told 300 schoolgirls that he’d been “foolish”, tried to “keep the news from his family” but that it was “soon on ESPN and social media”. “I couldn’t hide it anymore,” he added. “My mother, brother and sister were upset with me, not only for my actions but because I didn’t feel comfortable talking to them about it.”
Much like the doubt of his childhood, Houston turned a negative into a positive. “Even though it was a setback,” Pennington tells Gridiron, “it provided him with a great opportunity to test himself and how he recovered. It gave him greater impetus to push on. He and I have talked about the struggles Derrick Thomas had growing up, escaping his past. There’s not a whole heap of difference here. I look back on what happened as an opportunity. I know Justin did too.”
While the Thomas comparison is one being explored frequently, it was a present Kansas City edge rusher Houston took his cues from after being drafted in the third round. “I look up to Tamba Hali,” Houston admits to Gridiron. “He taught me almost everything I do. Technique, how to be a professional, how to work hard and to always put in that hard work.” Whatever advice Houston absorbed from his partner in crime worked. He outperformed his draft status as a rookie; became a Pro Bowl alternate with 10 sacks in his second year; racked up double-digits again in his third; and amassed an incredible 22 in 2014, just 0.5 shy of the NFL single-season record.
“There’s not a better player in the NFL,” his teammate Travis Kelce tells Gridiron. “Going up against him every day in practice and having to deal with that beast on a consistent basis is a nightmare. I feel sorry for all the other tight ends in the league because I’d rather not have to face him on Sundays. And the best part of him is that he’s such a competitor. He’s a team-oriented family guy who works hard for everybody in that locker room. You know you’re getting his best every single week.” This is how Houston prefers things. Simple, focused on others. After a three-sack game against Jacksonville in 2013, he was surrounded by the media at his locker when a radio reporter asked Houston about himself. The answer was 20 words. When a television reporter asked about Hali, his response was 141.
The media didn’t get much more out of him even after he broke the Chiefs’ single-season sack record held by Thomas, finishing half a takedown away from Michael Strahan’s famous league mark. In fact, he entered the final game of the season needing just one for the record, but instead spent much of the game dropping into coverage. “That’s the play they call. Whatever Coach calls, that’s my job to do. I’m here to do what the coach says.” So did he ever look back and think about not getting the record? “No. I looked back at the games where I had sacks and missed, where I had opportunities. [Those] are the games that I beat myself up on, the plays I got mad at. It was more the games like Miami; I know I missed a sack. I know Oakland, I had a chance that I missed an opportunity. And the Seahawks, there was an opportunity I had there that was taken away. Those are the plays I look back on and regret. The ones that got away.”
A missed sack against Seattle haunting a brilliant Chiefs pass rusher. Sound familiar?
Thomas and Houston are different men. They are different players; the former relied on speed and perhaps the greatest first step in NFL history. The latter is blessed with a versatility that is unmatched in the modern game. And yet they’re the same man. Humble, hardworking, devastating. Houston says: “I set my goals high and I always have high expectations. I just want to win. When I’m done I want to be mentioned as one of the best that ever came through here. Any time you can be mentioned in the same category as Derrick Thomas, that says enough itself.”
Every city, every team has its identity. Kansas City is known as Sack City. Thomas jump-started a legacy set in motion by Bobby Bell and Willie Lanier. Now Justin Houston has taken that torch. And he’s shining.
This article originally appeared in Issue XVII of Gridiron magazine – for individual editions or subscriptions, click HERE