"If I deserve to make it, I'll make it, plain and simple," Thomas said. "Because the rest is all ego. And if I don't, I don't. But it doesn't take away … because you remember when I came in a as a rookie in '96, I was just a big meathead, me and Larry Izzo, just ready to go. We were just trying to make the team. 'I want to make special teams.' And then looking back at it, when I was 8 years old coming from a small town in Texas, I never imagined this. You just keep pushing the bar higher and higher and higher, and for me to be in the conversation, come on, man."