Demaryius Thomas’ death hits the NFL hard, including Giants coaches and players
TUCSON, Ariz. — Giants wide receivers coach Tyke Tolbert coached Demaryius Thomas for seven seasons with the Broncos.
He was devastated to hear of Thomas’ death at 33 on Thursday night.
“My heart is HEAVY today as I mourn the passing of DT,” Tolbert tweeted Friday. “He was like a son to me and was one of the finest people I’ve ever known. I will miss him.”
Giants running back Devontae Booker and long-snapper Casey Kreiter both were Thomas’ teammates in Denver, as well. And Joe Judge coached Thomas during the 2019 offseason and training camp in New England.
“You hear news like that, there’s no good way to take it,” Judge said Friday. “You take all of his athletic accomplishments, and they don’t hold a candle to the kind of person he was. There’s a lot of guys in our building and throughout the league that are affected by this. Tyke was extremely, extremely close with D.T. Extremely close with him. And it affects his entire family.”
Thomas won a Super Bowl in Denver and racked up the bulk of his 724 catches, 9,763 receiving yards and 63 TDs under Tolbert’s tutelage.
Tolbert told Mike Klis of 9News in Denver: “I’m heartbroken.”
“When he came to our house on holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, my girls would bake him a cake on Christmas because that was his birthday,” Tolbert told Klis. “He’d tell the guys, ‘No one touch my cake. No one touch my cake.’ And then he’d give a piece to everybody.”
Tolbert said he found out about Thomas’ death from his agent and then received texts from Peyton Manning, former Panthers receiver Steve Smith and former Broncos running backs coach Eric Studesville.
Former Giants receiver Bennie Fowler, a three-year teammate who won a Super Bowl with Thomas in Denver, posted on Instagram that Thomas had “the biggest heart.”
“My brother DT, [you] treated my family and friends like his family and friends, took my mindset and the way I approached things to another level,” Fowler wrote. “I will forever appreciate you and your family. Your legacy will live on forever, not only as one of the best Broncos of all time, but in the warmth and brotherhood that came with how you treated others, to the funny southern drawl in the way you pronounced ‘Christmas’ and ‘grape jelly.’”
“We are all mourning the loss of what we will miss about what you did and what we were waiting for you to do next,” Fowler added. “But you didn’t miss anything. You touched us all with a life well lived. Love you bro.”
Judge said he woke up to overnight texts from his wife about the sad news.
Thomas was injured during his brief time with the Patriots in 2019, when Judge took on coaching the receivers in addition to being special teams coordinator. But Judge said the accomplished receiver had a “profound” impact on him and on a ton of players.
“This guy was able to be a leader to the team as an older, experienced player,” Judge said. “He was on PUP at the time. He was hurt. But his ability of almost transcending being a player and being a coach at times with the way he would share wisdom and talk through techniques, the hours that he would sit in my office when we talked through game plans.”
“We talked through route technique, we talked through defensive recognition, we talked through how he sees it on the field,” Judge said. “It was tremendous. But all the football stuff aside, none of that holds a candle to what kind of person this guy was, and I think everybody he interacted with, he impacted.”
Thomas was found dead in his home Thursday night, the police department in Roswell, Ga., told the Associated Press.
“Preliminary information is that his death stems from a medical issue, and our investigators currently have no reason to believe otherwise,” a spokesman for the department said
LaTonya Bonseigneur, a first cousin who grew up with Thomas, told the AP the family believes he died from a seizure.
“He had been suffering from seizures for over a year, and we believe he had a seizure when he was showering,” she told the AP. “He was alone and a friend couldn’t get hold of him, so he called his driver, who has a key because of these seizures, and he went into his home and found him in the shower.”
Thomas was known for being involved in the community just as much as he was beloved on the field. Current and former players from Tom Brady to Tim Tebow poured their emotions out on social media Thursday and Friday over the loss of their friend.
“I love all ya’ll,” Thomas told the fans when he retired this summer. “I will always love ya’ll.”
Judge said this type of tragedy can jar people’s perspectives back into focus.
“It kind of makes you reflect on how fortunate we are for any opportunity we have every day, and you never really know when it ends,” he said.