‘”The toughest part for me since I retired is not being around my teammates, Jim and Bruce and Andre (Reed) and Darryl (Talley),” Thomas said. “We were a family for 16, 17, 20 weeks out of the year and that’s probably the part that’s hardest for people who haven’t played to understand. That’s what makes these types of events fun, and even though we may have lost four Super Bowls, we were still one heck of a football team and a heck of a lot of guys that still care about each other.”‘